Meet the ‘World’s Only Brown Panda’

We’ve seen pandas flirt, go crazy and eat trash, but never be brown.

Apparently, the time has come for us to see one.

Meet Qizai, a seven-year-old giant panda residing in the Foping Panda Valley of Shaanxi province. He is believed to be the only living panda sporting white and brown fur.

Qizai was found as a two-month-old cub by researchers working in Central China. He was taken to the Shaanxi Rare Wildlife Rescue, Breeding and Research Center for feeding and medical treatment.

He was later brought to his current residence and is attended by 26-year-old He Xin, who spends up to 18 hours a day taking care of him.

The keeper described Qizai to Mail Online:

“He is slower than the other pandas, but he is also cuter… All pandas here have names. When I call out their names, the other black-and-white pandas would react and come to me quickly, but for Qizai, it usually takes sometime to him to realize that.”

Xin shared that Qizai was bullied as a cub when other pandas took away his bamboo.

But as Qizai grew up, he was placed in a separate enclosure, where he was fed up to five times a day. On top of bamboo, his meals included milk and flour buns.

At present, Qizai weighs more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and consumes 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of bamboo every day.

With Qizai’s age, researchers have been planning to prepare him for mating, according to Youth.cn. Soon, they will look into his appearance and attempt to understand why his color was different from his mother’s (black and white).

Xin expects Qizai’s mating arrangement next year.