Pity the pandas

It IS hardly surprising that both pandas at Edinburgh zoo are sick with colic (your report, 30 January), no doubt as painful and distressing a condition in pandas as it is in children.

The male, Yang Guang, is reported to have been sick for two weeks. His symptoms have included weakness and loss of appetite.

Among the established causes of colic in children is “neurological over-stimulation” – ie stress.

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How can these pandas not be stressed? Pandas’ natural habitats are a few mountain ranges in central China. They also used to roam lowland areas but farming and deforestation forced them out. In other words, yet another species has been driven to the brink of extinction through our own species’ greedy self-centredness.

Flying these animals half way across the world and sticking them in an urban enclosure where people can point, shriek and yell at them is not remotely connected to conservation.

It is a 21st-century version of the crass and heartless Victorian freak show.

Andrew Tyler

Animal Aid

Bradford Street

Tonbridge, Kent