August 21st, 2020 was a day of excitement for panda lovers. Mei Xiang, a 22-year-old panda, gave birth to a baby at American Smithsonian’s National Zoo. It is the seventh baby panda since she came to the country in 2000. Three of her babies have survived to adulthood. Mei Xiang is the oldest panda in the U.S. and the second-oldest recorded in the world to give birth, which surprised professionals.

“Pandas are an international symbol of endangered wildlife and hope,” said Steve Monfort, the zoo’s director, “and we are excited to offer the world a much-needed moment of joy.” As pandas are endangered animals, the birth of every panda holds special meaning.

“This is part of our bigger program, where it’s not just about keeping panda babies in zoos and educating people about pandas, but it’s about the wild protection work we do,” added Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director. According to Smith, the birth suggests people-to-people cooperation and wildlife protection between the countries have been going well. “Our partners in China were the first we contacted. They have much experience since there are so many pandas born in China.” Smith said.

As home to pandas, China spares no effort to protect pandas. Efforts have included protecting their living environment, introducing pandas to the wild and issuing laws to punish hunters. The Chinese government also set up iPanda as a website streaming (直播) pandas’ lives to a global audience.

For years, the animal has never failed in its duty as China’s ambassador (大使) of friendship and won hearts of fans worldwide. Since 2008, the movie series Kung Fu Panda has become popular globally, strengthening China’s international image, as Kung Fu Panda represents Chinese wisdom and courage. Bing Dwen Dwen, the cheerful official mascot (吉祥物) for the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games, connected and brought joy to people around the world.

The fiddler crab is a living clock. It indicates the time of day by the colour of its skin, which is dark by day and pale by night. The crab’s changing colour follows a regular twenty-four hour plan that exactly matches the daily rhythm of the sun.

Does the crab actually keep time, or does its skin simply answer to the sun’s rays, changing colour according to the amount of light strikes it? To find out, biologists kept crabs in a dark room for two months. Even without daylight, the crab’s skin colour continued to change exactly on time.

This characteristic probably developed gradually in answer to the daily rising and setting of the sun, to help protect the crab from sunlight and enemies. After millions of years it has become completely regulated (受控制) inside the living body of the crab.

The biologists noticed that once each day the colour of the fiddler crab is especially dark, and that each day this happens fifty minutes later than on the day before. From this they discovered that each crab follows not only the rhythm of the sun but also that of the tides. The crab’s period of greatest darkening is exactly the time of low tide on the beach where it was cought!

Asian elephants are an endangered species. Their numbers are somewhere between 39,000 - 44,000 and they spread across the vast continent — though almost half are located in India.

The main threat faced by Indian elephants, like all Asian elephants, is loss of habitat，which then results in human-elephant conflict. In South Asia, an ever-increasing human population has led to much illegal occupation of elephant habitat. Many construction projects of roads and railway tracks also break habitat into separate areas. Unable to mix with other groups, they run the risk of reproducing. Habitat loss also forces elephants into farmers’ fields for fowl. Once a farmer’s crops are destroyed, a conflict between humankind and the elephant is unavoidable.

Even though suitable habitat exists, illegal hunting remains a threat to elephants in many areas. In 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the international trade in ivory (象牙). However, there are still some ivory markets in a number of countries which make an illegal international trade. Although most of this ivory comes from poaching African elephants, Asian elephants are also poached for their ivory, as well as for their skin.

Catching wild elephants has become another threat to some wild populations, seriously reducing some numbers. Men would catch elephants to live with them and carry their heavy loads. India, Vietnam and Myanmar have banned catching elephants in order to protect their wild groups, but in some countries elephants are still caught each year for tourist industries. Tourists pay to ride the animals to the scenic spots to have their pictures taken.

Why are their numbers becoming so desperate? It is time that we humans should pause and reflect (仔细思考).