My little brother, the animal obsessive
My little brother is an encyclopedia of animals, exotic ones. He received a BBC DVD series called Life, narrated by David Attenborough, for Christmas, and he has never been quite right since. It documents interesting animals and their habits in their natural habitat. For this series, the camera crew went from Africa to Antarctica and everywhere in between filming animals.
Now, after watching this series, he wants to go to Tasmania to see the Tasmanian devils and South America to see tamarin monkeys. My brother also wants to visit Wood Buffalo, a very big national park in Alberta and the North-West Territories, or the Okanagan. I told my mom that we might as well take him to Tasmania, and she said to not get that idea into his head.
When we went to Holland to visit my grandparents, he received a bunch of animal cards from the supermarket (this project was for kids in collaboration between Albert Heijn WWF-Netherlands). These cards have pictures of animals on them, tons of animals, including obvious ones like pandas as well as salmon, coral and pangolins. The cards also have a number of points, and a question and answer about the animal . There was also a special book to store the cards in. One could trade these cards, and I think there is a game one can play. My grandparents are avid shoppers at that supermarket, and for every 5 euros they spent, they would get a pack of those cards. My grandparents knew that my brother loved animals and saved the cards for him. When my brother got them, he could identify every single one, even though these cards were in Dutch. His collection grew in size, and now I would guess that he has at least two hundred.
One of his cards from WWF is of a panda. The other day, when I decided to volunteer at WWF, my brother asked why the logo is a panda, versus something like a pangolin, of which he also has a card? I told him that he could ask WWF that himself. *
*The inspiration for the logo came from Chi-Chi, a panda that arrived at the London zoo in 1961, the year of the creation of WWF. The founders needed a “strong, recognisable symbol that would overcome all language barriers.” They agreed that the panda would do just the trick.