As anyone who as ever tried to get with a Panda Bear knows, pandas have an unusually low sex drive. This low panda libido, combined with a low panda population, makes the extinction of the panda highly possible. Luckily, some panda handlers in China have figured out some creative and kinky ways to get these endangered species to engage in heavy petting and hot and heavy sex.
To see if the story has a happy ending, and if the pandas learn to enjoy their own happy endings, check out the CNN report:
Animal handlers in China have developed a "sexercise" program to try to
encourage extinction-threatened pandas to overcome their notoriously
low sex drives.
Featuring hip and pelvic-strengthening "dances" for male pandas,
the program also sees inexperienced pandas watching their older
relatives make love to learn a few moves.
The handlers hope to
encourage mating among the sex-shy-but-endangered animals, the Chinese
state media reported Tuesday. They work at the Chengdu Research Base of
Giant Panda Breeding in the southwestern Sichuan province, the China
Daily said.
Keepers teach male pandas a dance-like routine to
strengthen the pelvic and hip area -- it also boosts the animal's
stamina, the paper said.
In the wild, pandas are solitary animals, coming together only in the spring to mate.
Keepers place a male panda in a female's den when she's not there and
vice versa. This allows them to smell each other's odors. And if the
pandas get randy at the same time, keepers bring them together, the
report said.
"We arrange love-making between two excellent
pandas in front of inexperienced pandas, which have never had sex. It
does work," the reserve's deputy chief, Fei Lisong, told the newspaper.
The unusual measures are aimed at increasing the population of captive
giant pandas. They have famously low sexual desires -- and that
threatens their future.
Fewer than 1,600 giant pandas survive in
the wild, along the edge of the Tibetan plateau in China, according to
the World Wildlife Fund.
The peaceful, bamboo-eating member of the bear family faces a
number of threats. Its forest habitat is fragmented, and giant panda
populations are small and isolated from each other. Poaching is also an
ever-present threat, the fund said.
The reserve has, in the
past, tried to boost panda sex drive by showing the animals
pornographic movies once in the morning and again in the evening.
The new "sexercise" regimen seems to be yielding results.
Fei said more than 30 percent of the 68 pandas at the reserve can have
sex naturally now, compared with only 10 percent a decade ago.
