Cooperative research helps pandas and science(2)

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Zoo Atlanta had received Yang Yang and his mate, Lun Lun, from the Chengdu base in 1999. That is also when the facilities began cooperating to study animal behavior, something no employee of any Chinese zoo had heard of before.

Many scientists and technicians at the Chengdu Zoo even questioned whether such research deserved their time and effort. They later found its value.

Statistics in the 1990s showed that among more than 100 pandas raised over the years in a simulated wild environment, only seven males had been able to mate naturally.

If a female panda at Chengdu Zoo entered estrus, the zoo would borrow a male from Beijing Zoo immediately and put them together. Contrary to their keepers' expectations of a happy couple, the two would fight ferociously. Nobody could explain why.

Through behavior studies, researchers learned that pandas need sufficient information about each other before mating. In the wild, they leave scent marks with urine and glands on their buttocks. With these marks, a male can tell a female his personal information and find the right partner.

Based on this research, panda keepers now put the male and female in adjacent enclosures before her estrus cycle to let them get to know each other. Staff members stop washing out the enclosures, preserving the scent marks left by the pandas.

Now, Hou said, 60 percent of adult male pandas worldwide have natural mating experiences. (The remaining 40 percent are used as sperm donors。) About half of pandas mate naturally every year, up from 10 percent in the 1990s. The annual breeding success rate also has doubled, reaching nearly 60 percent on average.

'We have learned a lot'

"China's ability to research giant pandas has substantially improved compared to 20 years ago," Hou said. "Like other Third World countries, our level of medical care, animal protection and scientific research used to remain low, but we have learned a lot through international cooperation all these years.

"Today, our country has reached the international level in terms of animal exhibition, research, feeding and management. We absorbed the advanced technologies of other countries, applied them into our animal breeding practice and made our own renovations."

Based on her cooperation with the University of Liverpool and the National Cancer Institute in the US, Hou and her colleagues built their own research team, developed new technology to standardize paternity testing for giant pandas, and applied for a national patent in 2010.

Tracking family lines is critical to maintaining genetic diversity in the endangered panda species.