Lately we've been reminiscing about some of our favorite Youtube sensations
f 2006. The video shows a newborn baby panda and its mother at the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre in China. Little does the mother panda know, her little one has a loud surprise brewing.
In case you've forgotten the majesty and hilarity of the sneezing baby panda, Xi Dou, shocking its unsuspecting mother, Mao Mao, while she munches on a snack.
As a woman after my own heart, she promptly regains her composure and goes back to eating.
The viral video was seen in all corners of the world. As is the case with most videos of this nature, it ended up taking on a life of its own and was parodied a number of times. Just a couple honorable mentions include being edited by Cute Things Exploding:
On May 12, 2008, a catastrophic earthquake measuring around 8.0 on the Richter scale, known as the Great Sichuan Earthquake, devastated all of China. One of the many institutions left in the earthquake's wake was the Wolong Panda Research Center.
The earthquake caused a rock dam to collapse next to Mao Mao's enclosure, forming a lake behind it and causing a wall of debris to collapse into it. According to Suzanne Braden, the director of Pandas International, their worst fears were confirmed when they began removing the rocks:
Watching the workers remove pieces of the wall, manually with ropes, I remember feeling such dread at what we would see underneath. The chip reader confirmed our worst fears. Mao Mao had been crushed when the wall came down.
The nine-year-old Mao Mao was survived by her three cubs, Wen Yu (b.2007), Xi Dou (b.2006) and Wang Wang (b.2005).
Braden attended Mao Mao's funeral and gave them specific instructions to take care of her cubs, and keep her memory alive:
You must look after her babies, OK? And their babies.On the bright side of an otherwise sad story, according to Braden's accounts, as of November 2013, Mao Mao's cubs appear to be doing well.
Her youngest, Wen Yu, was also recently re-adopted through Pandas International, is living in the Bifengxia Giant Panda Reserve, and was entered into their breeding program last year.
To learn more about or donate to Pandas International, check out their website HERE.