Add this bit of information to your knowledge of all things panda: Some love hot sauce.

Yang Yang, Zoo Atlanta's male giant panda, loves to sniff the stuff. He rolls in it. He spreads it on his fur like some folks slather it on their frijoles negros.

Photos by JOHN SPINK/Staff (ENLARGE)

Kenn Harwood's discovery at Zoo Atlanta has resulted in an unusual gift from Louisiana.

(ENLARGE)

Thursday's exam shows Zoo Atlanta's baby panda has grown by about an inch and a half-pound in the past week. Veterinarians also took a peek in the little critter's mouth, and as Dr. Maria Crane confirmed, 'She has teeth.' The baby's latest measurements are 19.5 inches and 6 pounds.

(ENLARGE)

RELATED LINKS: • Blog: She squeaks! • Photos • Video

Zoo staff who monitor his antics call this sort of behavior "self-anointing."

Mary Richardson of the Louisiana-based McIlhenny Co., who recently sent the panda a gallon of Tabasco, calls it ...

But we're putting the sauce before the course.

Kenn Harwood, one of the zoo's go-to guys in the care of large mammals, is credited with discovering the connection between a pepper sauce made in Louisiana and a bruin made in China. He had a bottle of McIlhenny's Tabasco — hot stuff, capable of removing crud from a penny. In the interest of science, Harwood decided to see what Lun Lun and Yang Yang would do with it.

Lun Lun apparently could take it or leave it. Yang Yang? He snuffled at it greedily, big nose quivering. Harwood realized the panda was replicating the self-anointing behavior of his peers in the wild — that is, rolling around in a strange scent. Harwood periodically gives Yang Yang his Tabasco fix, mixing the sauce in a piece of wool and letting the big boy have at it.

Hot news in Louisiana

This scientific discovery remained as obscure as one of the moons of Mars until September, a few days after Lun Lun gave birth to a baby girl. A biography of the parents that appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the old man liked the smell of Tabasco. Zoo Atlanta also posted an item on its Web site underscoring the papa panda's weakness for hot sauce.

News like that couldn't be squelched. It reached a Louisianian whose family traces its fortune to a fellow named Edmund McIlhenny, who began bottling a certain brand of liquid fire not long after the Civil War.

Word reached the marketing department at McIlhenny Co. that a guy in Atlanta liked the stuff so much he spread it on himself. Employees at the Avery Island., La., plant moved fast.

They found a gallon bottle of the sauce and a box to put it in. They contacted United Parcel Service and told the company to come, quick: An Atlantan was burning for some McIlhenny sauce.

Label with personal touch

Then, before the UPS guy drove away, the company turned to Richardson, who periodically makes special labels for special customers.

"For Yang Yang," she wrote, "to help spice up all that bamboo."

"I've done a lot of labels," said Richardson, who has worked at the company 18 years, "but never for a panda — or any other animal."

A Panda hot for Tabasco? Karen Baragona, the World Wildlife Federation's panda expert, laughed.

"Maybe it smells like a female?" she asked.

Maybe so. Lun Lun is busy these days with her cub, and a guy needs some sort of distraction.

The distraction arrived last week. At last report, Yang Yang was grinning like a panda in hot sauce.