Zoo Atlanta’s Pandas Possess Picky Palates

If a single food constituted 95% of your diet, you might get a little particular too.

After Zoo Atlanta’s new pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, turned up their noses at bamboo from a Savannah farm, zoo officials tried serving locally grown bamboo.

The 2-year-old pandas, who arrived last week from Sichuan province in southwest China, like it just fine.

“They’re quite the connoisseurs,” zoo spokeswoman Gail Eaton said Friday.

The Savannah bamboo is similar to the pandas’ diet in China, so the zoo planned deliveries by refrigerated truck three times weekly at a cost of $2,350 per week. Eaton said zoo officials consider it “a great relief” that the bears prefer the Atlanta bamboo, which is donated.

“It’s like a fine wine, you know,” she said of bamboo. “They’re just extremely fussy eaters, and their tastes are unpredictable.”