Who Discovered the Panda giant?

Until 1869, few had heard of the enormous black-and-white creatures hiding in China’s forests. Decades later, pandamania gripped the planet . 

Though today giant pandas are known and loved worldwide, it wasn’t always so. 

Ancient Chinese texts rarely mention the native animals. Westerners first learned of them in 1869 when French missionary Armand David, while in China, laid eyes on a particular black-and-white pelt then bought an entire , dead specimen from local hunters. A zoologist in Paris wrote up the official description of giant panda (literally, “cat foot, black and white”). 

In 1929 Chicago’s Field Museum put two mounted pandas on display courtesy of the Roosevelt brothers, Theodore Jr. and Kermit. the 2 were sons of the 26th U.S. president, whose love of sport hunting ultimately propelled major conservation reforms. With the assistance of Sichuan Province locals, they brought home the primary panda shot by white men for the museum’s new Asian Hall. Their feat prompted copycat expeditions funded by other museums. 

As dead bears lost some allure, plans shifted to getting a live panda out of China. In December 1936 a wild cub named Su-Lin left Shanghai by ship during a basket carried by Ruth Harkness, with an export permit reading “One dog, $20.00.” Harkness, a San Francisco socialite who had fallen crazy as she bottle-fed Su-Lin on a visit to China, soon sold the animal to Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. There, pandamania was instantaneous: quite 53,000 visitors showed up for the exhibit’s opening day.