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Twelve years together in captivity seems like more than enough time to fall in love and start a family, but not for the giant panda.
After arriving in Scotland together in December 2011, Britain’s only giant pandas, named Tian Tian and Yang Guang, returned to China.
Female Tian Tian (‘Sweetie’) and male Yang Guang (‘Sunshine’) were expected to produce an adorable cub during their stay at Edinburgh Zoo.
But after repeated attempts at natural reproduction and artificial insemination (to the outrage of animal rights groups), the bears never managed to conceive.
The species is notoriously bad at mating, especially in captivity, and MailOnline has taken a closer look to find out why.
Yang Guang, one of Edinburgh Zoo’s giant pandas, eats bamboo stalks in his enclosure in Edinburgh
Tian Tian (pictured) has had puppies in China, but not in the UK. Experts have admitted that the species is “difficult to breed”, especially in captivity.
Professor Simon Girling, head of veterinary services at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), admitted the giant panda is “difficult to breed”.
“It’s sad that Tian Tian hasn’t been bred here, obviously we wish he had, but this is not unusual with giant pandas, they are difficult to breed, there is a reason they are endangered.” he said.
Combined with its small organs and low metabolic rates, the giant panda’s diet (which is 99 percent bamboo) leaves it with very little energy to move, let alone mate.
Its energy-saving features include an underactive thyroid gland, the gland that produces hormones to help regulate metabolism (the process that converts food into energy).
Even when moving, a giant panda uses only half the energy of a stationary human.
“Unlike most other herbivorous species, its digestive tract has not evolved the long twists and turns that facilitate the slower digestion necessary for cellulose-rich plants,” a Chinese team of experts stated in the journal. Science.
“Pandas’ thyroid hormone levels are also a fraction of the mammalian norm.”
Giant pandas in zoos are even lazier than in the wild, partly because they are given bamboo and don’t have to search for it, but also because the stressors of a wild habitat are absent.
In captivity, pandas spend 33 percent of their time being physically active, while in the wild they spend 49 percent of their time being physically active.
As a result of this, they are difficult to breed in captivity as they lose interest in mating naturally.
Giant pandas Yang Guang and Tian Tian inside metal boxes are loaded onto a China Southern cargo plane at Edinburgh Airport on Monday morning.
What makes it more difficult is the fact that female pandas can only conceive two or three days a year.
According to the conservation organization Pandas International, a female panda has a single estrous cycle in spring, during which she is fertile for only 24 to 36 hours.
The male giant panda is also largely to blame.
According to legendary wildlife conservationist Susan Mainka, males are bad at reading when females want to have sex.
This was perfectly illustrated by a fun video from 2021, showing the advances of a playful female than a male more interested in his strange bamboo.
“Often the males misread the signals, and if they try at the wrong time, they get bitten,” Mainka said. the Guardian.
Zookeepers tried everything to get Tian Tian and Yang Guang to mate, from playing romantic music to putting them in a “love tunnel” to get them in the mood for passion.
Wildlife conservation charity Born Free estimates that Edinburgh Zoo spent £13.7 million on the pair and tried to get them a cub.
The charity called the project “sordid” and an “absolute failure” in comments to the Guardianwhile OneKind said that “there is no good reason to keep pandas captive in zoos.”
Yang Guang and Tian Tian arrived at Edinburgh Zoo in 2011 as part of a 10-year agreement between the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, which was later extended by two years. In the photo, Yang Guang
Yang Guang and Tian Tian arrived at Edinburgh Zoo in December 2011 as part of a 10-year agreement, which was extended by two years, between the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and the Chinese Association for the Conservation of Life Wild.
Edinburgh Zoo attempted natural reproduction and then moved on to attempting artificial insemination until 2018, when Yang Guang had to have his testicles removed after tumors were found.
Despite failing to deliver a giant panda cub in Edinburgh, the RZSS chief executive said Yang Guang and Tian Tian have had “an incredible impact”.
“We have made a significant contribution to our understanding of giant panda fertility, breeding and veterinary care, which has been of real benefit to efforts to protect this amazing species in China,” he said.
“It is encouraging that in recent years the prospects for giant pandas in the wild have improved, offering real hope for the future.”
Pictured, the China Southern cargo plane carrying giant pandas Yang Guang and Tian Tian takes off from Edinburgh Airport as they begin their journey back to China after spending 12 years in Scotland.
Yang Guang and Tian Tian were transported to the airport in metal boxes and loaded onto a cargo plane with a bamboo deck before their flight back to China, which departed on Monday morning.
They had been in quarantine since early November and will spend time in quarantine when they arrive in China, where they will live in a sanctuary in Chengdu.
The first attempts to breed giant pandas in captivity began in China in 1955.
In 1963, Ming Ming, the first giant panda bred in captivity, was born at Beijing Zoo, but none have ever been born in the UK.
At Mexico’s Chapultepec Zoo, a female named Tohui (1981-1993) was the first panda to be born and survive infancy outside of China.