A zoo in southwestern China's
Chongqing
Municipality has succeeded in enabling aged giant pandas in
captivity to reproduce through modifying their feeding.
A
27-year-old male panda at the Chongqing Zoo impregnated a female
panda that gave birth to one baby panda in 1996. Last year, a
20-year-old female gave birth to two cubs.
After nearly eight years of research, experts in the zoo found that
due to their decreasing digesting ability, giant pandas older than
19 years suffer from declining health that leads to their
deteriorating reproductive ability, said the zoo's leading
researcher Guo Wei.
The research group reached the conclusion based on the discovery of
a large amount of mucus in the feces of old pandas.
According to statistics gathered from observing wild pandas, the
group found that it takes a very short time for the food eaten by
pandas to go through their alimentary canals. Periodic artificial
feeding cannot meet the animals' natural habit of taking food from
time to time.
Meanwhile, though of high nutritional value, the food for pandas in
zoos is not helpful for the health of pandas' intestines and
stomachs.
Based on their findings, the experts in the zoo, which started
keeping giant pandas in 1962, improved the means of feeding and
made modifications to the ingredients of their food. In addition,
they keep control over pandas' sleeping schedule and weight.
The practice of the zoo has been approved by China's authoritative
Wolong Giant Panda Protection Center and the China Zoo
Association.
(Xinhua News Agency February 24, 2003)