{"id":8472,"date":"2023-11-26T16:50:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T16:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8472"},"modified":"2023-11-26T16:50:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T16:50:42","slug":"the-end-of-pandamonium-in-north-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2023\/11\/26\/the-end-of-pandamonium-in-north-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of Pandamonium in North Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve not mentioned the two giant pandas in Edinburgh zoo lately, and it\u2019s almost too late as they are off home next week. \u00a0When they first arrived, the ticket sales must have exceeded the rent the zoo was paying (around \u00a3600,000 a year). \u00a0Of course, the hope was that a bit of procreation would happen and the <em>zoos = conservation<\/em> story would come true. \u00a0Alas, although the zoo proposed in all sorts of ways, the beasts declined to dispose. \u00a0Nothing new there of course as they seem to be a species determined to die out. Here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-20588563\">a link<\/a> to the 2012 BBC story recording their arrival.<\/p>\n<p>I read this week that once their departure was announced hundreds of clearly deranged fans dashed to Edinburgh to say their goodbyes. \u00a0Although there was much jostling around the animals' enclosures, the accountants were happy.<\/p>\n<p>As one of the best examples of endangered mega fauna there is, they will be a big hole for the zoo to fill. \u00a0I'm tempted to suggest that certain Scottish politicians might take their place. \u00a0They'd certainly be cheaper, but would anyone really be interested enough in their conservation to pay good money to see them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve not mentioned the two giant pandas in Edinburgh zoo lately, and it\u2019s almost too late as they are off home next week. \u00a0When they first arrived, the ticket sales must have exceeded the rent the zoo was paying (around...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}