| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Pandas at San Diego Zoo Successfully Mate |
| 2005-04-10 |
| The two giant pandas at the city's zoo retired to their favorite spot under a few bushes and mated over the past two days - the only successful natural insemination of a panda this year in the United States, officials said Saturday. "
and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." -Bai Yun's Soliloquy It was the second mating for Bai Yun and Gao Gao at the San Diego Zoo, which closed its panda exhibit to visitors and pointed its Internet "panda cam" elsewhere for the occasion. Bai Yun gave birth in 2003 to Mei Sheng and did not mate last year because she was nursing the cub. A little privacy, if you please... Bai Yun will likely give birth to her third cub in about 4 1/2 months, said Don Lindburg, the zoo's giant panda conservation team leader. I'm so proud! Lindburg said Bai Yun had displayed signs of being receptive to mating in recent days, including yipping and raising her tail, walking through water and scraping pine tree bark onto her head and face. I've had girlfriends do things like this. Makes ya hot, y'know? "It's getting her perfume on for the date," Lindburg said. You go, girl. Zoo officials then lifted the gate that separates the two for much of the year on Friday to let the mating begin. The pandas, both 13 years old, spent about 15 minutes mating in the same spot on Gao Gao's side of the exhibit where they mated in 2003. Creatures of habit, gravitating back to those lusty days of yore to recapture the magic... Then, Lindburg said, "They pretty much ate and slept. They were pretty content to sleep most of the day, and try it again this morning." Being lusty takes a lot out of a panda, y'know. The pandas mated for about a half-hour on Saturday. Researchers detected live sperm in Bai Yun's urine and determined that she had been successfully inseminated. It was the Oysters Rockefeller, I'll bet. Female pandas are in heat for only a day or two a year. Natural mating attempts in recent weeks were unsuccessful at zoos in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Both females were then artifically inseminated, but it is too soon to tell whether they are pregnant. Nature's Way is best. The recent amorous tendencies of the pair in San Diego are a relief for zoo officials who tried unsuccessfully from 1996 to 2002 to get Bai Yun to mate with Shi Shi, the zoo's first male. Bad chemistry can't be overcome by mere humans. Artificial insemination resulted in the 1999 birth of Hua Mei, the first giant panda to survive more than four days in the U.S. Persistence pays. About 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild in their native China and another 200 live in captivity there. Less than two dozen pandas live in captivity outside China. Rare as hen's teeth, they are. Naturally impregnated pandas, even moreso. Perhaps Chinese humans need some shyness gene therapy. Under the loan agreement with China, all pandas born at zoos outside the country must be returned to China after the animals mature. I'll bet we could start a war with 'em, before they're ready, by refusing to return the offspring. You know how it's the little things, like others breathing and lands so close to their borders, that get them so upset. Worth a try, heh. Does that qualify this article for W0T Background? |
| Posted by:.com |