Word: pandas
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...just wants to be left alone. But a couple of scientists at the Wolong Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda keep poking her with long bamboo poles. Hua Mei, who is in heat and (biologically, at least) ready to mate, gets another prod, pushing her in the direction of the neighboring cage where her putative partner, Wu Gong, is watching with placid indifference. Hua Mei reluctantly decides to cooperate and, raising her tail, pads delicately backward toward Wu Gong. The male panda takes one look at her proffered hindquarters and scoots over to the far corner...
...Gong is not the only one rejecting China's panda breeding program, in which scientists have deployed everything from panda porn (films of the animals mating) to Viagra (the drug didn't work) in their attempts to get the notoriously sex-averse animals to make whoopee. Last year, with 34 panda cubs born, was the best ever for China's artificial breeding program. But environmentalists now wonder how necessary the breeding is. Back in 1975, with the pandas near extinction, China set aside 10 nature reserves for the bears, covering almost 2.5 million acres. That move, plus years of global...
...desk. All of the bamboo is dried and treated for bugs and infestations, resulting in a material that's harder than oak and no more likely to rot than its plastic equivalent. Now that your eco-guilt has been allayed, all you'll have to worry about is a panda making a meal of your mouse. www.playengine.co.uk
...quite. Yet only a few years ago, the boundless interior was a daunting and unprofitable place for many companies. Giant cities like Chengdu languished, starved of investment and government attention that went to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Chengdu was known mainly as China's largest panda-preservation center. Some companies like Korea's Samsung that tried to make an early move were disappointed and left, or limited their expansion...
...dollars and gone to extraordinary (some might say absurd) lengths to perfect a captive breeding program for the notoriously shy bears. After several decades of frustration, 2006 was a banner year. Using methods ranging from electric rectal probes and Viagra (the drug didn't work) to movies of pandas mating, China produced 34 panda cubs last year. That compares with only nine births in 2000. The program was initially spurred by a desire to save the species from extinction. But in 1975 China set aside 10 nature reserves for the bears, covering almost 1 million hectares in Sichuan province. That...