Keeper Connections: Tian Tian

Tiantian is our 26 year old male and he has been here for 23 years and has been a big part of my career. We were very excited to get the pandas when they came back in 2000 and my job was to keep an eye on Tiantian as they were bringing him into the building in his crate and that was the first time I actually laid eyes on him. When I peeked into the crate he was sound asleep and I thought I love this guy if he can sleep during this process and he must be really relaxed and laid back so just being with him from that very first day I bonded with him. Tiantian is my favorite bear. I would describe Tiantian as very relaxed, very chilled bear. He's just a really goofy bear at times and he's a joy to work with. Tiantian is very excited to have one-on-one time especially in the training area. He loves to be in the training area in fact he doesn't want to leave the training area and that's one of the places where I feel like I can bond with him the most. That's kind of the times where I know that we have a strong bond because he knows that I wouldn't have him do something that was going to be scary or hurtful. One of the things that's really fun with Tiantian is he does a lot of scent anointing. He likes to find scents to roll on and to put on him so sometimes we put scents in the yard or on things and he will roll on them and rub them all over his body and have a good time smelling like pumpkin spice or something like that. I think he was our first panda to go viral playing in the snow and rolling down the hill and just having a great time in the snow. He has fathered four cubs some of which are living in China and then we have our last cub here with us Xiaoqiji and that's an actually a big accomplishment because any cubs that we can add into the population and create the genetic diversity into the population is great. He's been a great ambassador for pandas and the program that we have. Millions of people have come to the zoo to see Tiantian. It's been quite a pleasure watching Tiantian grow up you know from a very playful cub to his role as a breeding male and now he's actually what we consider a senior citizen. It's kind of come full circle.