Moments In This Panda Sex Essay When I Was Like “Same”

“If you give Yang Guang a ball, he will most likely see if he can eat it, then let it go.”

“Female pandas ovulate just once a year.”

“Having evolved to lead solitary lives, pandas are kept in separate enclosures in zoos, to prevent them from killing one another.”

“A few weeks earlier, Maclean had daubed urine from Long Hui, an impressive male panda kept at Schönbrunn zoo, in Vienna, all over Yang Guang and Tian Tian’s enclosures, in order to spice the air with competition and possibility.”

“Females coming into heat have evolved to pee in ponds and streams, to alert potential mates, and although Tian Tian has been trained to urinate on command, she frequently refuses to comply. “Quite often she is like, ‘I’m holding on to this,” said Maclean.”

“At London zoo in the early 1990s, keepers had to spray their bears with fire extinguishers after one bit the other during an introduction.”

“Surviving — just about — on bamboo is both the evolutionary genius of pandas and the limiting factor of their existence. George Schaller, a pioneering biologist who tracked giant pandas for five years in Sichuan during the 1980s, describes eating the plant each day as their “one great vision in life.’”

“Foraging alone, and sleeping when they are not eating, wild pandas seldom come into contact with humans.”

“’The way they sit, the way they pick things up, and eat…People just have an instant connection with them,” she said, “because they can look like someone in a suit.’”

“One of the myths that biologists are keenest to dispel is that pandas are bad at breeding. You don’t survive for 7m years without knowing a thing or two. It’s just that panda sex, like many other things about pandas, is not quite like anything else.”

“They hated the wind, and were easily spooked by noise. They spent most of their time in indoor viewing areas attached to their enclosures, rather than outside.”

“One day I watched Yang Guang drink slowly from a dish of water, then transport himself with implausible grace from a wooden platform to a metal bed filled with hay, where he covered himself in bamboo, as if tipping a salad bowl on top of his head.”

– “Everything you always wanted to know about panda sex (but were afraid to ask),” The Guardian