Get Up Close and

Personal with Bao Bao in

Amazing New Photos
Take an exclusive backstage tour of the National Zoo
and meet Bao Bao, the newest giant panda star
By Susan Orlean
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
JANUARY 2014

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One recent morning, inside a renovated camel barn, across town

from the White House, and just past a refrigerator on which a form
was posted, listing portions of bamboo and something called “Leaf
Eater Food, Gorilla,” four adult humans sat with their gazes fixed on
a bank of video screens on which absolutely nothing was happening.
Everyone in the room was delighted. The images being transmitted
were of two creatures in an enclosure in an adjoining room. One of
them looked like a large, fuzzy soccer ball—its shape, proportions,
and black and white markings were reminiscent of a MacGregor
Classic Size 5. The other was the considerable bulk of a middle-aged
female Ailuropoda melanoleuca, a giant panda, named Mei Xiang.
Mei and the cub, which was born in late summer and is named Bao
Bao, were both sound asleep. Except for the slightest flutter of fur
rising and falling with their breath, they were absolutely motionless.
The audio feed from the enclosure was more nothingness, just a low
rushing whoosh made by air passing over a microphone. The
observers were nevertheless transfixed as the pandas continued their
deep, still sleep. Minutes ticked by. On the screen, one paw flicked,
and then the animals resumed their pure repose. The hypnotic
appeal kept everyone in the room almost as still and silent as the
 bears, all eyes on the screens. “Great morning,” one of the observers
finally murmured. “Everything is just perfect.”

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Whatever strange twists and bends evolution took to create the giant
panda worked devilishly well to create an animal that is irresistible.
Even inert, they have charisma. That morning, as I sat in the control
room of the National Zoo’s Panda House, Mei and the cub offered
little more than that one slight flick of a paw and a few minutes later,
one small adjustment of their sleeping positions, and yet I had to be
dragged away from the screens when it was time to go. The number
of people who have volunteered to monitor the cameras and log each
minute of the baby panda’s life—a job that could define the word
“tedium”— far exceeds the number needed. It is easy to enumerate
the elements that contribute to the panda’s allure. Take one part
overly large, childlike head; add big eyes (made to appear bigger by
black eye patches), rounded ears, chunky build and snazzy fur. Add
the fact that pandas rarely kill anything, and their usual posture—
sitting upright, bamboo stalk in hand, expression Zen-like, or
bumbling along pigeon-toed, wagging their short, flat tails—and you
have built the perfect beast. As Brandie Smith, a curator of
mammals at the National Zoo, said recently, pandas are the umami
of animals; they are simply delicious. It seems that we have the
equivalent of panda taste receptors that leave us besotted at the
mere sight of one, even when it is sound asleep, curled up in a ball,
doing nothing other than being a panda.

If they were simple, they might not be as marvelous. Instead, pandas

are peculiar: They are a one-off, limited-edition animal model that
has guarded many of its secrets, in spite of the fact that it has been
scrutinized by zoologists for decades. Even the basic question of
what they are—whether they are more bear or more raccoon or
something else altogether—is still tossed around. A study in 1985 by
Stephen O’Brien of the National Cancer Institute used molecular
analysis to definitively classify pandas as members of the bear
family, but they are definitely weird bears. Unlike other bears, for
instance, they are not hunters. (Instances of a panda eating another
animal are so unusual as to be newsworthy; last year, when a panda
in China scavenged the carcass of a goatlike animal, it made
headlines for days.) Unlike other bears, pandas do not hibernate.
They do not roar in a bear-like fashion. In fact, Smith showed me a
video of Bao Bao being examined by zoo veterinarians, and the
sound she made sounded exactly like a teenage girl whining,
“Owwww! Owwww!” As an adult, Bao Bao will bleat like a sheep. In
the meantime, she will grow one of the few functionally opposable
thumbs in the animal kingdom. She will use her thumb to strip
leaves off her beloved bamboo. When she is mature, she will have a
once-a-year estrus of one to three days, during which she will show
the only flicker of interest in other pandas she will ever demonstrate;
the fact is that the pandas we adore so much simply don’t adore each
other. (They hardly tolerate each other’s company.) After her brief
coupling up, the panda will have a hormonal surge that will seem to
indicate that she’s pregnant, but the surge occurs whether she is
pregnant or not. This makes it nearly impossible to tell the
difference between a real panda pregnancy and a “pseudo-
pregnancy” until the day a cub is born (or not) approximately four
months later, which is why there always seems to be such breathless
anticipation when a captive panda reaches the end of what might be
a real gestation. It’s a lot like a royal baby watch, but with one major
difference. When the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant, there’s no
question that she’s pregnant; a panda, on the other hand, keeps you
guessing. In short, the panda is the classic mystery wrapped in an
enigma, delivered in the most endearing package in the world.

These days, captive pandas are made, not found. Mei’s cub, for
instance, is the happy result of artificial insemination. Even though
Mei Xiang and the zoo’s male panda, Tian Tian, mate, they aren’t
very good at it, so the zoo veterinarians inseminate Mei for
insurance each time she is in estrus. In a small, crowded room across
the zoo property from the panda enclosure, the reproductive
physiologist who did the actual insemination, Pierre Comizzoli,
showed me several small metal tanks that contain frozen sperm from
many species at the zoo, including samples from Tian Tian, Bao
Bao’s father. In another of the panda’s many oddities, it has very
hardy sperm. Unlike, say, bull semen, panda semen does well when
it’s cryopreserved at minus-200 degrees Celsius. Strangely enough,
that hardy sperm produces one of the tiniest babies in the animal
world, proportionately speaking: A 250-pound panda delivers a cub
that is about the size of a stick of butter, and as fragile and helpless
as a china doll.

Are pandas some sort of evolutionary mistake? Their scarcity

sometimes makes it seem that way, and so does their eccentricity—
the finicky diet, the fleeting day of fertility, the tiny cubs. But that’s
not quite so. Their diet is one note, but that one note happens to be
among the most abundant forms of vegetation on the planet. Still,
bamboo is an odd choice, and scientists have determined that it
actually wasn’t the panda’s first choice of meals: Panda ancestors
were carnivorous distant cousins of hyenas, saber-toothed cats and
badgers. Pandas’ digestive tracts are designed for meat, and they
don’t have the long, redundant stomach system of grass-eaters like
cows—in other words, they eat a lot of bamboo, but they don’t digest
it very well. So why not stick with meat? Apparently, in the course of
evolving, pandas lost the taste receptor for high-protein foods. They
simply weren’t attracted to meat anymore. Scientists aren’t sure why
this happened. Whatever the reason, the result was an appetite for
leafy greens, and fortunately, the pandas’ range was covered with
bamboo forests that kept them nourished, even though an adult has
to eat bamboo almost constantly to maintain its body weight.

The panda’s brief window of breeding might be vexing to zoo staff

trying to get their pandas pregnant, but in the wild, pandas have had
no trouble reproducing. They are a species way off in the margins,
but these were comfortable margins until development began its
squeeze on their habitat. In fact, the newest surveys of China’s wild
panda population are rumored to contain good news: The number of
animals in the large preserves appears to be growing. This suggests
that pandas are not a misfit species, dwindling because of their own
bad engineering, but instead, a special animal so finely in tune with
its environment that any change puts the species in jeopardy.

We are so smitten with the pandas we are able to see in captivity that
it’s easy to forget the ones we don’t see, the wild ones that carry on in
their solitary, bamboo-crunching way, almost entirely hidden from
view in the snowy folds of China’s mountains. At the Smithsonian
Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, I met with a
few of the dozen or so researchers who spend their time worrying
about those pandas. According to David Wildt, the head of the
species survival team, it is sometimes a thankless and often
unglamorous task; much of the time, after trekking through hard
terrain in lousy weather, researchers end up seeing lots and lots of
panda feces but no pandas. There is much to learn even from that,
but it couldn’t compare with the pleasure of encountering one of
these almost magical animals, especially in its own domain. The
strange equation of evolution has created an unusual animal like the
panda, as well as having induced in humans a powerful desire to
look at pandas, however we can.

Sometimes, of course, the scientists in the field do get lucky. One of

the researchers I met at Front Royal, Wang Dajun, a research
scientist at Peking University who trained with the Smithsonian and
collaborates with the species survival team, spends most of his time
tracking pandas on the preserves in western China. He was
explaining to me that wild pandas’ elusiveness is more a matter of
their hard-to-navigate habitat and their solitary behavior, rather
than any fear of humans; they don’t actually seem to mind humans
very much. He began to grin, and then explained that one female
panda that was tracked beginning in 1989 had become particularly
relaxed in his presence. She was so relaxed, in fact, that one spring
morning, as she was walking with her cub, she turned to Wang and
indicated that she wanted him to babysit so she could head off to
feed. Another scientist filmed this episode of Wang providing panda
child care. In the video, now posted on YouTube, you will be struck
not only by the amazing sight of a panda cub tumbling and frolicking
with Wang, but also by the look of utter joy on Wang’s face as he
scratches the cub’s belly, extracts the sleeve of his jacket from the
cub’s inquisitive grip, and, then, at one point, hoists the cub up in
the air and dances with him. “That,” Wang writes on the YouTube
page, “was best time in my life.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-

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The JFK Christmas Card

That Was Never Sent
A rare White House card from 1963 evokes one of the
nation’s darkest holiday seasons
By James L. Swanson
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
JANUARY 2014

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The White House. The evening of Wednesday, November 20, 1963.

It was one of those legendary Kennedy parties. The occasion was a
reception in the East Room for the federal judiciary, including the
justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Although John
and Jacqueline Kennedy did not know it, this was also their last
night together in the presidential mansion.

Jacqueline Kennedy looked forward to their annual holiday

activities. They expected to spend Thanksgiving—November 28—at
the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Then they planned to spend a family Christmas in Palm Beach,
Florida, visiting with the president’s siblings and parents there. But
first they would fly to Texas on November 21, for a two-day
campaign swing through five cities, including Dallas.

Before they departed, John and Jacqueline Kennedy had already

selected and ordered their annual Christmas card: a 4 1/2- by 6 1/2-
inch Hallmark card, custom made for them, bearing a color
photograph of an 18th-century Neapolitan crèche that had been
displayed in the East Room of the White House each year they had
lived there. The inside of the card featured an embossed seal of an
American eagle holding an olive branch in one talon and arrows in
the other. The message inside read “With our wishes for a Blessed
Christmas and a Happy New Year,” though some cards simply
wished the recipient a Happy New Year. The Kennedys had signed
the first handful of the cards, fewer than 75, at their leisure. There
would be plenty of time to sign the rest of the cards—which they
planned to send out to many friends, supporters and heads of state—
when they returned from Texas.

The Christmas cards—one of which now resides in the collections of

the Smithsonian National Museum of American History—were never
mailed.

For Jacqueline Kennedy, it was a tragic Christmas season and the

beginning of a long, dark time. She should have been supervising the
elaborate decoration of the White House and hosting festive
receptions and planning the Christmas pageant that her daughter,
Caroline, would participate in. Instead she was packing her
belongings and her children’s toys in preparation for leaving the
White House. On Friday, December 6, two weeks after the
assassination, she moved out of the presidential mansion whose
historic preservation she had so lovingly supervised.

She sought refuge in her old neighborhood, Georgetown. Having

spent only two Christmas seasons in the White House, she was now
living with her children in a strange and empty house, vacated by
friends so that she could move in. Although Jackie sent out no cards,
an adoring and mourning public sent her cards and condolence
letters, more than 800,000 of them.

She did not, however, forget the handful of people who had meant
the most to her and the president. For them, she selected special
Christmas gifts—books, photos, personal mementos. To Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, she gave a specially bound copy of the
book Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States
from George Washington 1789 to John F. Kennedy 1961.

Jackie inscribed it “For Robert McNamara—The President was going

to give you this for Christmas—Please accept it now from me—With
my devotion always for all you did for Jack. Jackie, December 1963.”

To Dave Powers, part of the “Irish Mafia” and an aide throughout

Kennedy’s political life, she inscribed another copy of the same book:
“With my devotion always for all you did to give Jack so many happy
hours. You and I will miss him most. Jackie.”

She also gave Powers a framed set of three black-and-white images

of Powers playing with her son John Jr. She inscribed the mat
around the photograph: “For Dave Powers—Who gave the President
so many of his happiest hours—and who will now do the same for his
son, John Jr. With my devotion always—for your devotion to
Jack/Jackie, Christmas, 1963.”

The holiday card that was never sent survives as a reminder of the
Christmas that John and Jackie Kennedy never celebrated, and
remains an American treasure, a fragile relic of the all too “brief
shining moment.”

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The Earliest and Greatest

Engineers Were the
Incans
Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough treks to
Peru to see how Machu Picchu was built
By G. Wayne Clough
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
JANUARY 2014

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In American universities, engineering students typically learn that

military and civil engineering originated in Europe, and they study
the European tradition almost exclusively—with maybe a glance
back at Egypt or China. But the Inca, whose great era of imperial
expansion ran roughly from 1438 to 1533, were also master builders,
and Smithsonian-affiliated researchers are now bringing their
accomplishments to light.

I saw examples of Incan engineering prowess firsthand when I

visited Peru in 2011. I walked segments of what was once a 24,000-
mile network of roads and gazed in amazement at civil and religious
works perched atop, or on the sides of, steep mountains near Cuzco,
the Incan capital. The structures at Machu Picchu are the best-
known of the Incan triumphs, but there is so much more.

In November, the American Indian Museum hosted a public

symposium on Incan engineering accomplishments and the lessons
they hold for builders today, particularly in the area of sustainability.
MIT professor John Ochsendorf, one participant, has become an
authority on the rope bridges built to traverse the gorges in the
Andes—bridges so awe-inspiring that upon seeing them,
neighboring peoples would sometimes submit to the Inca without a
fight. Later, conquistadors would be reduced to crawling, petrified,
across the swaying rope contraptions, although they could bear the
weight of columns of soldiers.

Ochsendorf has studied historical records, built a replica bridge and

visited the last remaining Incan bridge, in remote Huinchiri, Peru. It
is fashioned from native grasses woven into threads, in turn braided
into ever-bigger ropes. Each year nearby villagers ceremoniously cut
down the existing bridge, let it float away—it’s 100 percent
biodegradable—and replace it.

Ochsendorf’s tests suggest that the bridge’s main cables can support
16,000 pounds, and he believes the cables of the sturdiest Incan
bridges, incorporating leather, vines and branches, could have
supported 200,000 pounds.

Christine M. Fiori, associate director of the Myers-Lawson School of

Construction at Virginia Tech, began studying Incan roads five years
ago, using tools like ground-penetrating radar. She expected to find
deep foundations but didn’t. How could they have survived?
“Primarily because the Inca controlled water,” Fiori says: They
observed its natural course and directed it, preventing erosion.

As someone who spent 35 years teaching engineering, I know we can

learn much from the Inca, who intuitively grasped how to build
structures that harmonized with nature. The engineering
symposium is part of a broad effort at the American Indian Museum
to explore the complex relationship between Incan technology and
culture that will culminate in a grand exhibition, in 2015, devoted to
the Incan Road.

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How the Hot Tamale

Conquered the
American South
Our intrepid reporter heads back to the Mississippi
Delta in search of his favorite food—and the title of
tamale-eating champ
By W. Hodding Carter
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
JANUARY 2014

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Eat one more! Eat one more!” the crowd chanted. And at that precise
moment, I hated every last one of them—including the ringleader,
my momma, who beamed with pride and anticipation.

For weeks I had been bragging that I’d easily win the five-minute
tamale-eating contest at the second annual Delta Hot Tamale
Festival. Just three minutes into the revolting spectacle, I found
myself wondering how I could escape without leaving the hard-
earned contents of my stomach behind.

This was the shining moment for my hometown of Greenville,

Mississippi. Some 10,000 festival-goers had come to rejoice in the
savory power of the Delta hot tamale. I had loved and eaten them
even before I could talk. Biting into a Delta hot tamale is like taking
a magic carpet ride back in time—one taste and I was 10 years old
again running down the levee without a care in the world. To my way
of thinking, hot tamales are the Delta with all its spicy, earthy
aromas.

I owed it to my hometown not to give up now. And, after all, I wasn’t

just your average, run-of-the-mill glutton. I was an award-winning
eater: Nearly two decades back, I had taken second place at the
Louisiana Oyster Festival’s oyster-eating contest, downing 135 in 15
minutes.

Stomach calming, I pried my tamale-greased hand loose and

determinedly peeled the parchment from my next victim. Grimacing
directly at my mother, I shoved it, whole, into my mouth. I distinctly
heard her mutter, “I don’t know how many more of these I can
watch.”

The Mississippi Delta is a storied land, famous for many things, from
its rich, alluvial soil to the blues to racial strife to its writers, including
such greats as Walker Percy, who was raised there after his
parents’ death, and even my grandfather, who penned Pulitzer
Prize-winning newspaper editorials on racial intolerance. Now come
tamales—or put more precisely, as they are known regionally, hot
tamales.

They likely arrived with Mexican workers in the early 1900s and then
stayed for good as a cherished late-afternoon treat. The hot tamale
delivers a high-caloric punch in a relatively small package: ground or
shredded meat packed with cumin, paprika, garlic and cayenne (the
few ingredients nearly every hot tamale has in common) encased in
a nurturing blanket of cornmeal and corn flour, all lovingly wrapped
together in a corn husk. At six or so inches in length and tubular in
shape, it may be smaller than its Mexican cousin, but it more than
makes up for it in taste and heat.

Usually, the why and how of a popular regional dish is immediately

obvious—from New England’s creamy clam chowder to Los
Angeles’ burritos to Louisiana’s spicy crawdads. The hero in
question is from the area, can be found in overabundance and is
relatively cheap for the locals to acquire, cook and sell. Among
these varied popular fare, the hot tamale stands alone for the very
reason that it doesn’t seem to—and at least in the beginning, didn’t
—belong to the Delta.

As any casual observer of the culinary world knows, tamales are

from an entirely different culture and are one of the most time-
consuming and difficult staples to master. I still remember the hours
my mom, sisters and I spent over the course of two miserable days
trying to make them ourselves, and except for some crumbling, fairly
tasteless clumps of sodden cornmeal leaking with juices and bits of
meat, all we had to show for it was an eight-foot-long counter littered
with soggy, torn and discarded corn husks and mounds of escaped
filling staining the formica. We later learned that mastering and
making hot tamales is such an arduous task, the typical hot tamale
maker cooks up at least a hundred dozen in a batch.

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