World News for Students of English

21-10-2016 15:00

Jia Jia, the oldest panda in captivity, has died at 38 years old, which is around 114 in human years. During her last two weeks, Jia Jia slept quite a bit, was unable to walk without difficulty, and was no longer eating or drinking as she used to. Before her illness, she ate around 10 kilograms of food per day, but towards the end of her life, she was eating less than 3 kilos. In the end, her owners at Ocean Park in Hong Kong made the decision to put her down.

She came to the park in 1999 when people gifted her to Hong Kong to mark the second anniversary of the city’s handover from Britain.

The large mammals were endangered for many years because most of their natural habitat has been destroyed for farming and construction, but last month their status changed to vulnerable thanks to decades of work by conservationists.

Difficult words: mark (celebrate, honour), handover (handing something over – to give someone the responsibility for something), endangered (seriously at risk of extinction), vulnerable (vulnerable animals are likely to become endangered unless something changes)

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