PANDAS are bad at sex and picky about food. They eat little but bamboo, though it leaves them weak and hungry. Females are in heat only for a few days a year; males have the savoir faire of pimply prom dates. These genetic misfits might have died out long ago, had they not been so adorable.

“Omfg look at this baby panda,” tweeted Mia Farrow, joining the chorus of fans ogling the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s “panda cam”. This black-and-white video feed often features little more than a pile of rocks, yet it has lured more than 10m gawkers since late August, when Mei Xiang, the zoo’s female giant panda, gave birth to a tiny pink squiggle of joy. Bao Bao (pictured; her name means “treasure” in Chinese) will meet her adoring public on January 18th.

Pandas are always a draw, but a cub generates its own kind of panda-monium. Though panda-breeding practices are improving (Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated), births remain rare. Bao Bao is expected to boost the zoo’s attendance figures and merchandise sales. Zoo membership shot up 18% in late 2013 on a promise of special access.

Yet the costs are steep, too. China once gave its pandas away as cuddly ambassadors, but since the 1980s the country has been doling them out in exchange for hefty conservation fees and trade deals. Zoos around the world have paid $1m a year for mating pairs, $600,000 for a cub and $500,000 if one of them dies. Another chunk of change goes towards research and habitat. The Smithsonian estimates that it spends $2.6m a year on its panda project; $55,000 on bamboo.

To curb the cost of cuteness, America’s four zoos with pandas—in Atlanta, Memphis, San Diego and Washington, DC—bargained in 2008 for better rates and longer loans, bringing the fees down to $550,000 a year. China was in no position to haggle, as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake had left the country in need of safe places to keep its pandas.

Bao Bao should fit in well in Washington: she costs a fortune, has no useful skills and is always on TV. On the plus side, she is better-looking than any member of Congress—and unlikely ever to be involved in a sex scandal.