With 12,000 people dead from the earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province on Monday — and the death toll expected to climb significantly — the survival of 144 endangered pandas is small comfort. But survive they did: all of the pandas living in three research centers in the earthquake zone have been reported safe. Three-quarters of China’s wild pandas live in the Sichuan province, but the wild ones can “sense things,” says Suzanne Braden of Pandas International: “I’m sure they moved to higher terrain.”
