These pandas are having a good chew on their favourite snack - bamboo - and are none the wiser that scientists are stealing their poo.
Researchers are fascinated with how pandas are able to digest tough bamboo.
And they believe it may shed light on how to produce biofuels to power the future.
A group of Belgian researchers at Pairi Daiza wildlife park in Belgium have been collecting the panda droppings to examine the microorganisms living in the animal that digest bamboo.
But six-year-old male panda Xing Hui, whose name means 'sparkling star', and his female partner Hao Hao, meaning 'kind', paid no attention to the strange theft going on in their pen.
They instead enjoyed soaking up the morning sun and chewed through the first stems of their daily portion of bamboo, unaware of the scientific interest their excrement has generated for researchers at Ghent University.
While the genetic make-up of pandas is that of a carnivore, the animals have adapted to a diet consisting almost exclusively of bamboo, professor for biochemical and microbial technology Korneel Rabaey said.
"It's a huge feat for this animal to digest something as hard.
"And also, they only eat certain parts of bamboo. So if I have a piece of bamboo, you'll see certain parts are eaten and others are not, and we don't understand very well why," he said.
While a few scientific studies have looked into the digestive tract of the panda, the researchers say their study is the first to focus on the microorganisms in the animal's gut.
"The prime reason we take the poo is we know that it's the bugs, the microorganisms living in the panda that digest all that tough food.