Assume the following (completely hypothetical) situation:
I’m really, really rich. Filthy rich. I go skeet shooting with tightly packed, flattened discs of compressed $500 bills. THAT rich.
I have a house out in the middle of nowhere, free from prying eyes, with plenty of room for the panda to roam around and do panda things, and I’m financially able to see that it has everything it needs for a long, happy panda life.
I started wondering about this when I read an article about how there’s a HUGE black market out there for exotic birds. Why anyone would want a nasty, loud bird is beyond me (I had a bad experience with a parrot as a child) - pandas, however, are pretty awesome. I imagine it’d be much harder to procure a panda and much more expensive, but not totally impossible since, well, bribery works and all.
So what would it take?
Money, of course – but how much of it, and to who? Is there some Official Panda Council in China that I’d have to pay off?
if you were that filthy rich you could do it legit. set up a non-profit foundation for preservation of pandas and hire some qualified zoologists for some type of research into how to make them breed in captivity.
“American zoos generally pay the Chinese government $1 million a year in fees, as part of a typical ten-year contract. San Diego’s contract with China was to expire in 2008 but got a five-year extension at about half of the previous yearly cost. The last contract, with the Memphis Zoo in Memphis, Tennessee, ends in 2013.”
I believe all Pandas outside China are still Chinese property, they are effectively rented out.
the other thing is that despite the fact that they appear to be totally lazy meatsacks, they’re still big-ass carnivores and can dismantle you pretty effectively.
Actually, pandas are omnivores. There was a good article in National Geographic in the early 80’s where researchers established that panda will pretty much eat anything they can shove in their mouths (even carrion)
Seriously though, how dangerous are pandas? Even if they don’t eat meat, they still have claws. If I fell into the panda exhibit at the zoo, and assuming I didn’t fall *on *one of them, would I be torn to pieces in minutes or could I walk right out?
I have seen highly protected animal cubs in animal markets in third world countries, openly on display. I suspect if you were to head there with a fist full of US $, something could be arranged. How you get the thing home would be another issue altogether.
I think the ‘set up your own zoo’ thing would be the way to go. Sort of, legit zoo, with Chinese owned Pandas, up front, private, illegally acquired, pandas in the back.
Come on, where’s the fun in that? If you can’t use your cash to buy people off, acquire illicit pandas and do it all in a shadily nefarious manner, what’s the point in being filthy rich?
Could you train it to hold really still and pretend to be a stuffed panda? Or (if there are rules about importing dead pandas) train it to pretend to be a *fake *stuffed panda?
