Man recreates viral video of Tian Tian the panda playing in snow

A video of Tian Tian, left, a giant panda at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, playing in the snow on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, inspired Jeffrey Perez, of Maryland, to dress up in a panda costume and reenact the bear's antics on social media. Credit: YouTube/Instagram
Why should pandas have all the fun?
After a video capturing Tian Tian the panda playing in the snow at the Smithsonian's National Zoo went viral, a Maryland man took to social media to challenge the roly-poly bear.
Dressed in a panda costume, Jeffrey Perez mimicks the 264-pound giant panda in a video posted to Instagram Saturday. Perez scales a mound of snow and then playfully tumbles down, all the while tossing around the white powder and occasionally grabbing his right foot just like Tian Tian. Along with the video, he posted the caption: "I challenge #tiantian to a snow battle!"
It's unclear how a panda vs. man snow battle would go down, but if a winner was to be determined based on video views and social media "likes" and shares, it may be hard to beat Tian Tian.
Although Perez's video had 248 likes on Instagram as of 8:30 p.m. Sunday, and was picked up by a number of news outlets and websites, the footage of the real panda at play garnered more than 50 million views on the zoo's Facebook page and more than a million views on its YouTube channel since it was uploaded on Jan. 23. Oh, and it also was shared about 170,000 times from the zoo's Twitter page and received more than 44,000 likes on Instagram.
But you can be the judge. Check out the video of Tian Tian's snow day fun above and click here to watch Perez channeling the panda.

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