It's hard for us to imagine it, but there was a time when pandas were mythical, when even scientists were not sure that they existed as real bears.

And this is very surprising because from early history, we knew of the existence of black bears, of brown bears, and even polar bears have a long history with humans.

But the panda was not known.

I'm Amanda McGowan, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we are talking to author Nathalia Holt about pandas.

Nathalia wrote an entire book about how the sons of Theodore Roosevelt, Ted and Kermit Roosevelt,

set out on this treacherous expedition in the 1920s through China's Himalayan wilderness,

all in search of this creature they weren't even sure really existed.

The panda bear. And it did not go quite as they planned.

The Thalia's book is called The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda.

Thank you. deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. I love pandas. I'm sure you love pandas. Everybody loves pandas. They're big. They're beautiful. They're so

cute. I live in San Diego and last year at the San Diego Zoo got two new pandas, and I swear, once they

arrived, there was wall-to-wall coverage of these pandas for weeks and weeks on local news.

It was like all you saw when you turned on the TV.

But I say that to point out that pandas have a certain allure about them today.

And I was even more fascinated to learn that in the 1920s, pandas were thought of

as these rare creatures and maybe even mythical creatures. And Nathalia knows all about this.

And so it first became discovered in 1869 by Westerners when a French missionary in China

had local hunters go out to find him

interesting animals. And one of the animals that came back to him was a small cub. And it was

black and white. It was the kind of coloration that no one had seen before. And so he was excited

about this. And he sent the skin

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