Police track down red panda that escaped from local zoo to a wholesale fruit market – as officer jokes panda rescue is ‘not a topic taught in training’
- Police found the red panda in a fruit shop after it escaped from Newquay Zoo
- The Cornish zoo keeps two red pandas called Seren and Sundara
A red panda was discovered in a fruit shop in Cornwall after escaping from Newquay Zoo.
Police rescued the endangered animal from the Freshpoint wholesale fruit market on Newquay’s Springfield Road, after it fled from Cornwall’s biggest zoo.
Police inspector Guy Blackford marked the unusual incident with a post on Twitter – as he joked that ‘panda rescue is not a topic taught in police training yet’.
He said it’s ‘not often’ that Newquay police get called to rescue ‘an escaped Red panda from the local zoo’.
Commenters, in turn, asked whether the Cornish police force had sent a ‘panda car’ in response.
A red panda was discovered in a fruit shop after escaping from Newquay Zoo
Police inspector Guy Blackford joked that ‘panda rescue is not a topic taught in police training yet,’ as marked the unusual incident on Twitter
Red pandas are native to mountains and forests of east Asia and have been listed as endangered in the wild since 2008.
Newquay Zoo, currently keeps two red pandas – called Seren and Sundara – after 11-month old Sundara was transferred to the Cornish wildlife sanctuary earlier this month.
The Cornish zoo first got Seren from Touroparc Zoo, near the French city of Lyons, in 2019.
She, however, gained a new friend, after Sundara was brought to Newquay from Banham Zoological Gardens in Norfolk on 16 May this year.
Commenters made jokes on Twitter with one posting a picture of Master Shifu, a red panda from the film series Kung Fu Panda
One commenter joked ‘we don’t do the swans in Cornwall’
Commenters asked whether a ‘panda car’ had been sent to the incident
Sundara was brought to Newquay Zoo following the loss of Seren’s male companion, Rowan, last year.
Newquay zookeeper, Megan McEvoy, said: ‘After losing male red panda Rowan last year, we were keen for Seren to have a new companion to share her enclosure with.’
Red pandas are, in fact, only distantly related to giant pandas, despite sharing a similar name.
Panda cars were small cars used by police from the 1960s to the 1980s, that were likened to the bears because of their black and white markings.
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