Panda says no to live sex show
Print Edition
A MALE giant panda was seemingly struck by stage fright on Friday when offered the opportunity to mate with his female partner ... live on TV.
Keen to raise the curtain on the mysterious breeding process of the black-and-white bears, a Chinese TV network tried its hand at matchmaking and broadcast the whole thing via the Internet.
But the supposed star of the show, Wu Gang, failed to live up to his billing when introduced to would-be mate Lin Bing.
In the 50 minutes the pair spent together, Wu Gang was mostly hostile toward Lin Bing, who had displayed signs of being in heat, his keeper said.
“Male pandas can be picky, and if they don’t like a partner, they show symptoms similar to sexual apathy,” said Luo Bo, a keeper at the Bifengxia Panda Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, where the filming took place.
The fruitless encounter was broadcast live online by China Network Television’s iPanda channel in association with the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas.
The mating season for giant pandas runs from March to May, and in the wild males will compete energetically for female attention.
In captivity, however, enthusiasm for courting is diminished and females often have difficulty getting pregnant. Even when they do, many new mothers have problems caring for their young.
Despite the disappointment of Friday’s show, the iPanda channel (ipanda.cntv.cn) said it will broadcast more giant panda mating attempts in the future.
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