14 DAY TRIAL // Female giant panda Tian Tian, which currently lives at the Edinburgh Zoo in the UK, had to be artificially inseminated after it was discovered that, despite its being rather friendly towards male giant panda Yang Guang, it had absolutely no intentions of mating with it.
Specialists explain that a female giant panda is only fertile and therefore able to become pregnant for a period of up to 36 hours.
Because of this, wildlife experts kept a close eye on both Tian Tian and suitor Yang Guang over the course of an entire week, hoping that the two might display signs of being ready to mate.
According to Daily Mail, Yang Guang was very well behaved and did manage to get Tian Tian's attention, yet it appears that the female panda failed to see Yang Guang as a potential father to its offspring.
“Yang Guang had been interested and shown consistently encouraging behavior, however based on his many years' experience, our Chinese colleague Professor Wang felt that although Tian Tian had displayed all of the correct behaviors, she had also displayed signs that told him she would not be conducive to mating,” a spokesperson for the zoo told members of the press.
When both zoo keepers and the wildlife experts monitoring these two panda came to understand that the animals would not mate, it was agreed upon that it would be best to resort to artificial insemination.
The same source informs us that the procedure ran as smoothly as possible, and that the staff at the Edinburgh zoo are now waiting to see whether or not Tian Tian is soon to give birth to a panda bear cub.
Apparently, the two pandas will be made to spend some time in isolation and recover from what one can only assume was a rather stressful week.
“Both pandas and humans are sleeping today. The procedures went very much to plan and they are both well, but will be off show until Tuesday,” the Edinburgh Zoo's spokesperson went on to argue.