Pandas are known for their distinct pattern and coloring: bright white fur and jet black on their backs and around their eyes. But in very rare cases, a panda will be born with brown, softer caramel-colored fur where the black fur normally is.

He Xin
There are only less than 2,000 pandas in the wild, due to the fact that pandas rarely give birth. This is because females ovulate only once a year.

He Xin
Giving birth to a brown panda is even more rare. There has been only five recorded cases of brown pandas, and today, there’s only believed to be one in the entire world.

He Xin
Meet Qizai, a brown panda who resides at a panda center called Foping Panda Valley in China’s Shaanxi Province. He is seven years old, and they believe his brown coat may have come from a genetic trait specific to pandas from the Qinling Mountains. But his mother had normal black and white fur, so it may be a recessive trait.

He Xin
Qizai was rescued and brought to Foping Panda Valley after being found, alone and malnourished, when he was just two months old.


Staff nursed him back to health, and today he is a healthy and happy panda. His caretaker, He Xin, says he is “gentle, funny and adorable.” But sadly he is a little slower than the other pandas and was bullied by them for a while. They would steal his food since he eats slower too.


Now, Qizai has his own enclosure, so he doesn’t have to worry about being bullied or having other pandas steal his food.



Instagram / pandamayi
Qizai may look different and act a little slower, but aside from that, he’s just like any other panda. He is average-sized and weighs around 220 pounds, and also eats around 44 pounds of food a day.


Pandas are no longer on the endangered species list, but they’re still considered “vulnerable.” Since Qizai is now older, they plan to soon match him up with a female. They’d like to grow the panda population and are also curious to see if his brown coloring is passed down to his babies.

He Xin
Watch Qizai in the video below:


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A recent case study of crash test simulations in China has shown that some researchers are involved in extremely inhumane animal testing. Images released with the case study show live pigs being used as crash test dummies.

The study highlighted the case of one test that involved 15 young pigs, who were strapped into car seats and used as dummies for high-speed simulations. Many of these pigs were still very young, having only been alive for 70 or 80 days before they were used in the tests. In the tests, the animals were strapped into various different seatbelts for impact testing.


Half of the animals died in the tests, and the others were badly injured and likely traumatized from the experience.

The researchers said that it was necessary to use the young pigs because their bodies are very similar to that of a human child, and they were hoping to actually see what these crashes would do to a living creature’s organs.

The scientists responsible for these experiments say that they were compliant with US guidelines and claimed that their study was approved by an ethics committee. However, it seems that they may not be very familiar with what the laws in the US are, because it has been illegal to use pigs and other animals in these types of experiments in the states since the 1990s.


Zachary Toliver of PETA sais that these experiments were senseless and cruel.

“Despite the existence of sophisticated animal-free models, experimenters continue to fasten abused, frightened animals into car seats and crash them into walls until their bodies are bloody, bruised, and mangled. Live pigs are pulverised in these tests, leaving them with broken bones and severe internal injuries before they’re killed and dissected,” he said.

“Pigs don’t naturally sit up in car seats. Their anatomy is also very different from that of humans, so the data obtained from these horrific animal experiments aren’t applicable to human car-crash victims. Car companies figured out years ago that these kind of experiments are worthless and tell us nothing about a human experience in a car crash,” he added.

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A product many have not even heard of is causing an apocalypse of sorts for the world’s orangutans.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, rainforests are being slashed and burned at an alarming rate to make way for a third world cash crop: palm oil.

Palm oil has become almost ubiquitous in household products; it is used in instant ramen dishes, shampoo and conditioner, makeup and skin care products, chocolate-hazelnut spreads and nearly half of all packaged goods at any given supermarket. Many manufacturers have turned to palm oil because it is so cheap—until one factors in the cost to both human health (it is horrible for your heart), and the irreplaceable rainforests both our global ecosystem and the native orangutans depend upon.


To date, over 90 percent of orangutan habitat has already been destroyed. Additionally, smoke and debris from the fires are causing further damage to our primate relatives.


“The problem with fire and smoke is absolutely dire,” said Lis Key, International Animal Rescue’s communications manager in a Takepart interview. “Wild orangutans and orangutans in centers like ours are badly affected by the smoke. Some suffer upper respiratory tract infections, which can even prove fatal. Some of the babies we’ve taken in recently have been suffering not only from dehydration and malnourishment through lack of food but also breathing problems from the polluted air.”


One must wonder if a lower price point is worth the suffering and even possible extinction of living beings.

Luckily, it is not game over for orangutans yet, and there are steps we can all take, right now: boycott products or companies that use non-sustainable palm oil, write to companies that make products you use with this ingredient and tell them you won’t support unsustainable palm oil, educate friends and family and click here. A different ending to this story may yet be possible.

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Mushroom-foam is as cheap as Styrofoam, requires no fossil fuel, and creates no plastic pollution, biodegrading in your garden in just a couple of weeks


Ikea is switching to a new mushroom-based, biodegradable alternative to polystyrene (Styrofoam) packaging for its furniture and home decor.

Known as Mycofoam, the product is made of agricultural waste products like corn or hemp husks, oat hulls or cotton burrs and mushroom spores.

The agricultural waste is molded into the desired shape and then seeded with mushroom spores, which begin to sprout mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi that forms a web of hairlike roots that typically hold soil together, but in this case hold the packaging together.

The mycelium threads spread rapidly throughout the material, digesting and binding it into a durable, shock-resistant foam.

When the foam reaches a desirable consistency, it is heated and dried to stop mycelium growth, so it can be used to cushion and protect everything from glass and ceramics to electronics and furniture.


Once the packaging has served its purpose it can be “tossed in a lake to feed fish” or into your compost pile to fertilize your garden, says the video below. In these moist environments, Mycofoam is completely biodegraded in just a couple of weeks.


Styrofoam on the other hand takes thousands of years to decompose and harms countless animals and other organisms that ingest it in the process.

Created from waste products, the material requires no fossil fuel, making it just as cheap (and probably cheaper to make in the future) as polystyrene.

Hopefully Ikea’s idea will spread and all Styrofoam packaging will be replaced with “mushroom-foam.”

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