Pandas are well-known to be finicky about procreation. But the idea that one can teach an innocent male how to perform his stud duties by sitting him in front of the panda equivalent of a dirty video is just one indication, revealed in the RTHK series I Love Pandas (Pearl, 6.50pm), that something may be very wrong in China's approach to boosting the population of its famous endangered species.
The second episode of the series, The Last Resort, focuses on the work of the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, giving an intriguing insight into the behaviour not only of pandas in captivity but into the attitudes of their keepers and the wider politics of panda preservation.
Since the early 1980s, the reserve has managed to breed 170 animals. But with a mortality rate as high as 50 per cent, more are dying than are being raised.
According to panda expert Dr George Schiller, who conducted research in Wolong in the 1980s, this is a clear indication that the reserve has still not worked out how to successfully manage the species in captivity.
The film shows the lengths the panda keepers have to go to, to entice the creatures to mate. The main problem is that few pandas raised by humans know how to do it. In the wild, the young stay with their mothers for two years, during which time they will pick up the facts of life quite naturally. In the reserve, they are separated at six months in order for the mother to breed again more quickly, resulting in sexual ignorance.
Given the high failure rate, it would seem to make sense to allow these animals to live in more natural surroundings and to enjoy more normal relationships between mother and young, male and female.
