Why Pandas are unlike any other bear

Rise up, Sunshine. I'm Koi Wire here with your 10 minutes of news. Hope you are having an awesome, fantastic, phenomenal day. I have a question for you. What is your favorite breed of dog? My family is trying to convince me that we should get one. And I'm thinking some big old dog, but they keep showing me these pictures of these teeny tiny Pomeranians, and I do not know how I feel about that. Anyway. I was just thinking about this because our lead story today is about a breed of robot dogs.

Now we've shown you a lot of videos of robo dogs being introduced at tech shows or being tested in the lab, but today we're getting a look at a new fleet being put into action in the real world working in forests. This pack is heading out into the wilderness using cameras and lasers to map trees in ways humans maybe never could. Here's how the Oxford Robotics Institute is giving forest management a whole new prospect. They do look and feel very much like robot dogs.

When we go to the forests or to the park sometimes just to test the robots, we do attract attention not only of the dog owners but the dogs themselves so they they tend to come close and then sniff around. Of course, our robots can't understand this yet. So my name is Nive Chebrollu and I'm a senior researcher here at the Oxford Robotics Institute.

So this is the Antibiotics Quadruped. This is a robot platform that we have been using in order to do the forestry mapping. There are about eight cameras on the device which I use for obstacle detection. as well as other cameras which are more high resolution for understanding the trees and the environment around us. Lasers, scanners, as well as inertial measurement units. Once we have all this data as the robot is moving, we can stitch together to create a 3D map of the environment.

So the goal of the Digiforest project was to build digital models of forests using cameras and lasers on a variety of different robot platforms. So with more detailed reconstructions of the forest, we're able to more quickly identify when there is maybe disease or whether a tree is damaged or could be helped or whether it could be uh harvested uh for for its wood.

Forest management has used measuring tapes for over 100 years and this use of quadruped robots will transform the way it's carried out. With this, as the robot is walking, you densely map the entire region. So you get a per tree inventory. So we're able to monitor it at a much higher resolution than what we were able to do in the past. So I think we now have a kind of a fully functional system that's able to map a hectare maybe in twenty minutes.

So when you have four points of contact, it's naturally stable compared to a humanoid kind of a robot which has two legs. So just energy-wise, it's much more uh efficient to have a four-legged robot, especially in uneven terrain.

The cost of these walking platforms is falling dramatically. They're with longer battery life, with with different battery technology. Uh it's an exploratory technology. It's not one you're likely to come across when you go down to the woods today, but uh you never know.

Pop Quiz Hotshot A Giant Panda's diet consists of almost exclusively quat, tree bark, berries, bamboo, or insects. There is no bamboozling you if you said bamboo. Pandas spend up to 16 hours a day feasting on the woody grass. A full-grown panda can eat up to a hundred pounds of bamboo per day.

For the first time in decades, there are no giant pandas in Japan. The last pair were sent back to their ancestral home in China. The twin pandas were born in Tokyo, but under Beijing's long-running panda diplomacy program, They still belong to China, and the agreement to send them back reached its deadline. Crowds gathered at the Tokyo Zoo to bid farewell to a pair of four-year-old pandas last week. CNN's Hanako Montgomery reports. For the first time in half a century, Japan will be panda-lit.

as its last two cubs, Xiao Xiao and Leila, are leaving for China. I'm really sad. We always said, there's a panda here, so we'll get to see it sometime. And then this happened. I wish I'd come more often. News of the twins' departure has drawn fans from across the country, some waiting hours for a final glimpse. Though they were born in Tokyo in 2021, the Cubs were always meant to return this year to their motherland, which loans the Bears as goodwill ambassadors and to strengthen trade ties.

But as tensions between Japan and China deepen, prospects for another pandalone seem increasingly far-fetched. It feels like such a cute innocent animal is being used as a trump card or weapon. Relations between the two countries are at their lowest point in years, after Japan's Prime Minister Sanai Takaichi said in Parliament that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response.

China, which claims Taiwan as its own, considers the issue a red line and has responded with a flurry of economic pressure tactics. like cutting flights, warning citizens against traveling to Japan, and suspending seafood imports. Now the panda's departure. though pre-planned, feels like yet another blow. Honestly, at the operational level, we don't know if we'll get more pandas. But we hope to continue working with China on conservation and breeding research in the future.

Japan first welcomed pandas in nineteen seventy-two to mark the normalization of ties with China. What followed was decades of panda fever. with a zoo's surrounding neighborhood transformed by tourism and panda themed merchandise. Tens of millions of dollars are generated each year from the panda economy, according to one economist's estimates. But with no new bear loan in sight, Japan's 50-year chapter of panda diplomacy comes to a close. It's time for a d- d

Did you know? Even though giant pandas eat a prolific amount of bamboo, they can only digest about 17% of it. That is because, despite evolving to be herbivores, they've retained a short digestive tract, normally seen in carnivores. This combined with a fiber-rich diet means pandas are prodigious producers of Excrement. An adult panda can go number two up to 100 times a day, producing dozens of pounds of waste.

Talk about Kung Poo panda. And that's not their only bizarre bathroom habit. Get this. Pandas are also known to urinate while doing a handstand. Yes, this is true. Scientists say the unusual act. is actually a technique to mark their territory. The higher the The bigger the panda. Do not try this at home. Positively enlightening stuff. And teachers, I am sorry for any Party talk have caused.

Today's story getting a 10 out of 10, a farm dog, you have to see to believe, and you won't believe that the dog can't see. Goose arrived on a Pendleton County, Kentucky farm in 2013. And his owner, Miss Lindy Huffman, says he chose her. He was the very first puppy that came and ran up to me and he snatched the harness out of my hands and took off with it and I think in that moment I knew that he was mine and I was hit.

So he kind of chose me in that moment. For more than a decade, Goose has done it all, bringing in cattle, helping during planting season, and keeping a close eye on the greenhouse. That dedication is now earning Goose national attention as one of three finalists for the People's Choice PUP Award.

He's been getting a lot of traction. It's not going to his head too bad. Now, listen to this. In 2021, Goose was dealing with glaucoma, which began to take his eyesight, forcing Lindy and her husband to make a difficult decision to remove his eyes. We were worried, you know, is he still gonna love the same? Is he still gonna adventure the same? Is he still gonna, you know, farm the same?

We'll let Goose show you how it's done. The farm dog phenom still knows his way down the gravel path, knows the pasture, and how to get to the red barn, ready for another day of work. Goose is a living testimony that losing something doesn't mean losing your way. The important thing is to do your best to keep moving forward. All right, superstars, a couple shout-outs for you before I send you on your way.

First up, Mr. Washington at Riverdale High School in Riverdale, Georgia. Thank you for continuing your family's legacy of teaching and go Raiders. And this shout out goes to Mr. Lytle at Meadow Park Middle School in Beaverton, Oregon. Thank you for the kind emails from your students. Rise up. It is almost Friday, everyone, so go out. Spread some joy, be a spark of joy, be a spark of kindness, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow. I'm Koi Wire and we are CNN 10.