Birds do it, bees do it. And so do giant pandas, if you let them pick a panda that they actually fancy.

It may seem obvious, but because there are so few pandas, breeding programmes have generally matched individuals with the lowest possible levels of relatedness and genetic similarity, and have focused less on attraction.

Pandas have a bad rep when it comes to reproduction. From phantom pregnancies to apparent apathy, it can be a frustrating process.


But perhaps we’ve been too harsh in judging them. Pandas are more than twice as likely to get it on if offered a choice of mates – a finding that could boost breeding programmes and support efforts to reintroduce the animal into the wild.

This discovery was made by Meghan Martin-Wintle of conservation charity PDXWildlife in Oregon and her colleagues. While working at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China, she noticed a large number of failed breeding attempts.

“Often a female would be placed between two males and would not show positive behaviours toward the genetically preferred male, but instead toward the other male,” says Martin-Wintle.

When this female was then encouraged to breed with the genetically preferable male, this often didn’t result in copulation or a cub. This made her wonder what would happen if pandas were given the opportunity to mate with other pandas instead.

The feeling’s mutual

Martin-Wintle’s team worked with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, in Wolong, to study the effect of mate choice in more than 80 pandas. They devised a set of experiments in which pandas saw two possible mates through windows into adjoining enclosures.

The team then recorded which one received the most sexual interest, indicated by behaviours like scent-marking, urination, masturbation and penile erections. After a day or so, two pandas were placed in the same enclosure to breed.

They found that both male and female pandas are more than twice as likely to start mating with an individual that they had shown interest in. Females allowed to mate with their preferred partner were twice as likely to give birth to a cub. The best results were when both male and female chose one another. Such mutual attractions gave a 75 per cent success rate in producing cubs.

Other factors had an effect too. Females that had been raised by their parents, rather than hand-reared by humans, were more likely to have cubs, while older, larger males were more likely to become fathers.

More baby pandas

Team member Ronald Swaisgood, at San Diego Zoo in California, hopes incorporating mate choice into panda breeding programmes will boost their success.

“The pay-off will be higher reproductive rates and more baby pandas,” he says. “When a zoo is struggling to get its pandas to breed, it might be possible to switch out one of the pairs to see if a behaviourally compatible pair can be found.”

This would mean more panda cubs to coo over at zoos, but could also ensure the success of China’s reintroduction plan. “If you look across species, reintroductions where more animals are released have markedly higher success rates,” says Swaisgood.

China has already released a few pandas into the wild.

Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10125

Read more: “Studying pandas’ scent may help save them”

(Image: Benoit Tessier/Reuters)