A Word About Pandas . . .
One of the best daily editorials / compilations available on the web is the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web," by James Taranto.This excerpt appeared in the column a few weeks ago and amuses me greatly. Hope you enjoy the diversion into some rather . . . er . . . fascinating facts about our panda friends as well!
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The Case Against Pandas
Mei Xiang, a panda at Washington's national zoo, gave birth to a cub Friday night, the Associated Press reports. The new cub is the sixth to be born at the zoo since 1983; the others "all died within days."
Pandas have great difficulty reproducing. The Washington Post noted in March that Mei Xiang's efforts to mate had been rather ineffective:
"In past years, they've shown excellent sexual behavior but have been a bit out of sync," Lisa Stevens, the zoo's assistant curator for giant pandas, said yesterday. "We're very concerned about the lack of synchrony."
Translation: The male giant panda is eager, Stevens said, but has "alignment" problems; the female cries out to him loudly and displays other come-hither behavior, but then lies flat on her stomach.
As it turned out, the zoo had to resort to artificial insemination to get Mei Xiang knocked up; and it really was a now-or-never situation: "Giant pandas are capable of becoming pregnant for only a day or two once each year."
As Slate's David Plotz noted in 1999, the zoo's previous panda pair, Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling, also were carnally clueless:
At first Hsing-Hsing failed to inseminate Ling-Ling because he tried to mate with her ear and her arm. (He may have been inept because he never learned about mating in the wild.) Then the zoo imported a male panda from London Zoo to mate with Ling-Ling. He mauled her instead. (So much for panda comity.) Eventually Hsing-Hsing got it right, and between 1983 and 1989, Ling-Ling bore five of his cubs. All of them died within days. One cub perished after Ling-Ling sat on it. Another seems to have been killed by a urinary tract infection acquired from Ling-Ling. Keepers believe Ling-Ling infected herself by sticking bamboo and carrots up her urinary tract, surely neurotic behavior.
Reproduction isn't the only area of biology that gives pandas problems. Ninety-nine percent of their diet consists of bamboo, which is "high in indigestible fiber" and "loaded with abrasive compounds" and therefore "difficult to eat and to digest"--especially for pandas, which have "a digestive system characteristic of a carnivore."
posted by shadowlands7 @ 6:52:00 AM
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