Bamboo-zling Baby Bear: Chinese researchers dress as pandas prepare cub for wild (VIDEO)

Training a captive-bred giant panda to live in the wild requires both effort and imagination, according to staff at the Hetaoping Wilderness Training Base in southwest China's Wolong Nature Reserve.

Staff members have been wearing specially-made panda suits to interact with giant panda Zhang Xiang in preparation for releasing her to the wild scheduled for Wednesday. 

Experts wanted to train her survival skills and ultimately release her to the wild.

The special giant panda suits are essential to create an illusion for Zhang Xiang to accept the approaching staff as adult giant pandas. Pandas have a very sensitive sense of smell.

They can identify the enemy merely by smell, so the panda costumes are coated with panda urine and dung.