China expects a record number of baby giant pandas to be born
this year, as 10 female pandas are now pregnant and another 23 are
in estrus at two giant panda breeding and research bases in the
southwestern Sichuan
Province.
Qizhen, a four-and-half-year-old female panda at the Giant Panda
Breeding and Research Base in the provincial capital Chengdu, was
confirmed by zoologists Friday to be pregnant, shortly after she
found her first ever Mr. Right at the base.
Qizhen is the 10th female giant panda to become pregnant this
year, said Zhang Zhihe, director of the Chengdu-based Giant Panda
Breeding Technology Committee.
Zhang and his colleagues will use state-of-the-art artificial
fertilization technologies to impregnate more female pandas in
estrus -- including 13 at the Chengdu base and 10 at the Wolong
Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.
"We expect to welcome a record number of baby pandas by this
autumn," said Zhang.
In 2003, 19 baby pandas were born via natural or artificial
insemination in China's breeding bases and 16 of them survived.
The survival rate of panda cubs has therefore risen from 30
percent several decades ago to nearly 90 percent now as a result of
modern methods to promote mating and feeding.
Giant pandas show little instinctive behavior in captivity,
especially sexual desire, essential for natural mating and
conception.
Forestry authority statistics show fewer than 10 percent of male
giant pandas mate naturally and fewer than 30 percent of females
conceive naturally.
Female pandas normally enter estrus at age four or five and have
only one chance for pregnancy a year. After 160 days of pregnancy,
they deliver only one or two cubs.
Chinese zoologists have worked hard in recent years to tackle
the endangered animals' breeding problems and have resorted to
artificial insemination, frozen semen and even showing the pandas
videos on natural mating in the wild to arouse their latent sexual
instincts.
The country has made remarkable progress in breeding giant
pandas since the 1990s. Ten were born 2002, and 16 in 2003.
There are 160 giant pandas raised in an artificial environment
worldwide, two-thirds of which are living at the Wolong Giant Panda
Breeding and Research Center and Chengdu Giant
Panda Breeding and Research Base.
As one of the most ancient and the most endangered species in
the world, the number of wild giant pandas is estimated at around
1,000 worldwide, most living in the high mountains around the
Sichuan Basin in southwest China.
(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2004)