A cuddly flagship species of conservation

I'm not a fan of giant pandas, though they are cute and cuddly, and their unusual upright-sitting pose, bamboo diet, black-and-white fur and big eyes - thanks their eye patches - give them a comic appearance. And I know they are shy, and rare in the wild.

In particular, I don't like the fact that people's obsession with pandas has helped them steal the thunder of all the other animals in China. Many such animals are much more endangered in the wild - for example, different species of gibbons in China and the spoon-billed sandpiper, a sparrow-sized bird, just about 500 of which survive.

In fact, the panda is no longer endangered, as the International Union for Conservation of Nature recently downgraded its status from "endangered" to "vulnerable" on its red list of threatened species, because its numbers in the wild have been rising.