BERLIN (Reuters) - Zookeepers at Berlin’s main animal park are hoping to cure a young female panda’s habit of walking backwards by introducing her to one of life’s most precious pleasures: sex.
They plan to introduce four-year-old Meng Meng to Jiao Qing, a panda three years her senior, in the hope that romance will help her with the frustrations associated with life in captivity that could be behind her habit.
“Meng Meng is in puberty,” Berlin Zoo director Andreas Knieriem told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Sunday. “The reverse walk is a protest against things she dislikes, be it the food or the carers.”
(Photo: Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters)
China lent Meng Meng and Jiao Qing to Germany earlier this year. The two bears are a major attraction at the zoo’s $10-million Chinese compound inaugurated by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Xi Jinping in July.
Giant pandas in captivity are kept apart except for in the mating season, which occurs between February and May.
“By then, Meng Meng will have reached sexual maturity and could focus all her energy on seducing her partner,” Knieriem said.
Also on HuffPost
Ye Ye, a 16-year-old giant panda, lounges in a wild enclosure at a conservation center in Wolong Nature Reserve. Her name, whose characters represent Japan and China, celebrates the friendship between the two nations. Ye Ye’s cub Hua Yan (Pretty Girl) is being trained for release into the wild.
Zhang Hemin—“Papa Panda” to his staff—poses with cubs born in 2015 at Bifengxia Panda Base. “Some local people say giant pandas have magic powers,” says Zhang, who directs many of China’s panda conservation efforts. “To me, they simply represent beauty and peace.”
Is a panda cub fooled by a panda suit? That’s the hope at Wolong’s Hetaoping center, where captive-bred bears training for life in the wild are kept relatively sheltered from human contact, even during a rare hands-on checkup.
Three-month-old cubs nap in the panda nursery at Bifengxia. A panda mother that bears twins usually fails to give them equal attention. Keepers reduce the load by regularly swapping cubs in and out—making sure each gets both human and panda-mom care.
Wolong Reserve keepers transport Hua Jiao (Delicate Beauty) for a health check before she finishes “wild training.” The habitat also protects red pandas, pheasant, tufted deer, and other species that benefit from giant panda conservation.
Read more on "Pandas Gone Wild" in the August 2016 Issue of National Geographic.
Gregg Doyel flashed a heart sign at Caitlin Clark at her introductory press conference on Wednesday afternoon to kick off an incredibly strange back-and-forth.
