Kicker: Picky pandas

NICK EICHER, HOST: You’d think creatures with ravenous appetites wouldn’t have such picky palates, but we’re talking pandas—with diplomatic immunity.

Bao Li and Qing Bao are newcomers to the National Zoo in Washington. The panda diplomats, as they’re called, are thoroughly pandered to.

Yes, I said that.

Mike Maslanka is head of nutrition at the zoo. Audio from NBC:

MASLANKA: Early on in my career when I started here we ran out of bamboo. And that was terrible.

Lesson learned. Because pandas aren’t just picky, they’re porky.

MASLANKA: We’re going to be looking at about let’s say 100 pounds per animal per day.

There’s a specific farm nearby that harvests bamboo four days a week just to keep the Pandambassadors happy. Only the freshest, greenest stems meet panda standards.

These two spend up to 16 hours a day chowing down on all that bamboo, which, let’s be honest, can’t leave much time for embassy work.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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