Animal Stories

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Twins for panda shown sex videos

 

Hua Mei needed help in knowing how to breed

 

A panda in China who became pregnant after watching sex education videos has given birth to twins.

Hua Mei was born in the US but moved to China in February.

 

Officials said they had determined that one of the twins was a boy, but they could not check the other one because Hua Mei was still cuddling it.

 

The news was cause for celebration at the reserve she lives in, because pandas rarely breed in captivity and are endangered in the wild.

 

 

"We are all very excited. The cubs are in good condition," said Li Wei, from the Wolong Panda Conservation Centre in Sichuan, southern China.

 

Before she became pregnant, Hua Mei had been shown videos as preparation for a series of "blind dates" because experts feared she had little knowledge of mating after living in captivity.

 

Born to two Chinese pandas on loan to San Diego zoo, Hua Mei is the first foreign-born panda to return to China.

 

China earlier this year announced the results of a first comprehensive survey of its wild panda population.

 

This showed there were an estimated 1,600 of the creatures left in the wild, 40% more than previous figures suggested.

 

Correspondents warned that the numbers might reflect the fact that the survey was so thorough, rather than a genuine recovery in numbers.

 

A further 161 pandas were reported to be living in captivity.

 

 

Frustrated chimp takes up smoking

Feili has begun imitating her spectators

 

A chimpanzee has taken up smoking and spitting, according to China's Xinhua news agency.

It is unclear why Feili, 13, has started smoking but her zoo keeper said it was because she was frustrated.

 

She has turned from a "gentle girl" into a "shrew", said Liu Bing, director of Zhengzhou zoo, Henan province.

 

Mr Liu said Feili's partner at the zoo was 28 years her senior, and was unable "to meet her sexual demands".

 

However, she does appear to be quite keen on smoking - and has been known to resort to desperate measures to get what she wants.

 

Xinhua reported that Feili became excited when she saw a visitor light up a cigarette, and grew impatient when they showed no sign of giving it to her.

 

It quoted one boy visiting the zoo as saying: "Just now a tourist threw a cigarette butt to just outside the cage - she tried to get the butt with a stick."

 

Young female chimps upstage males

Chimps fashion stalks and twigs to get inside termite mounds

 

It would seem young female chimpanzees take their studies a little more seriously than their male classmates, a study in the journal Nature has shown.

Females learn from their mothers how to gather termites much faster than males - who prefer to spend more of their time playing, US scientists say.

 

Elizabeth Lonsdorf and colleagues conducted their research on wild chimps in Tanzania's Gombe National Park.

 

They say the gender differences are similar to those seen in young humans.

 

Girls and boys pick up fine motor skills such as writing at different rates, and the team suggests its research could therefore indicate that sex-based learning differences may have an ancient origin.

 

Educationalists trying to develop learning strategies for children could find the work instructive, the scientists believe.

 

"This finding is a heads-up to researchers studying the learning of relatively complex skills that they should take sex into account," said Dr Lonsdorf, the director of field conservation at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

 

Later roles

 

In a four-year-long field study, the team observed 14 young chimps and their mothers engaged in the practice of "fishing" termites out of mounds with tools made from vegetation.

 

The research found the females learnt the skills earlier, spent more time at it and tended to catch more termites with each try.

 

The young males spent a lot of their time playing and swinging around - behaviours the team says may help them in typically male adult activities later in life, such as hunting and struggling for dominance.

 

"The availability of animal protein is limited for chimpanzees. They can fish for termites or hunt colobus monkeys," explained Dr Lonsdorf, who caried out the study with Lynn Eberly and Anne Pusey.

 

"Mature males often hunt monkeys up in the trees, but females are almost always either pregnant or burdened with a clinging infant.

 

"This makes hunting difficult. But termites are a rich source of protein and fat. Females can fish for termites and watch their offspring at the same time.

 

"Adult females spend more time fishing for termites than males do. The young of both sexes seem to pursue activities related to their adult sex roles at a very young age."

 

Source: bbc.com