TOYS may improve the sex lives of pandas, say researchers in China who have
introduced playthings into the animals鈥� pens.
Many male pandas raised in captivity spend hours a day engaged in repetitive
behaviours called stereotypies. They might pirouette around the enclosure or
suck a paw for 20 minutes or more. Such males show little interest in females,
and sometimes carry on twirling or sucking even when a female in oestrus is just
metres away.
Ronald Swaisgood, a behavioural biologist working at the Wolong Breeding
Center in the Sichuan province of China, put toys such as stuffed burlap sacks,
plastic balls and spruce branches into the panda pens every few days. After a
year, the pandas displayed repetitive stereotypies only a third as often as
before.
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It wasn鈥檛 just that they had more to fill their hours, says Swaisgood, who is
usually based at the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species in San Diego.
鈥淪ince there was much less stereotypy even after I removed the items, I know
they had some psychological effect.鈥�
Whether the males actually mate more often because of the toys has still to
be tested, but last season was the best ever for panda sex at Wolong. Four of
six males and eight of nine females mated. It is almost impossible to tell how
many females are now pregnant, but six cubs were born in a baby boom last
week.
