The ugly #Panda Factories

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/15/world/asia/pandas-zoo-breeding-death-captivity.html

Today, #China has removed more pandas from the wild than it has freed, The Times found. No cubs born in American or European zoos, or their offspring, have ever been released. The number of wild pandas remains a mystery because the Chinese #government’s count is widely seen as flawed and politicized.

Along the way, individual pandas have been hurt.

Because pandas are notoriously fickle about mating in captivity, scientists have turned to artificial breeding. That has killed at least one panda, burned the rectum of another and caused vomiting and injuries in others, records show. Some animals were partly awake for painful procedures. Pandas in China have flickered in and out of consciousness as they were anesthetized and inseminated as many as six times in five days, far more often than experts recommend.

#news #animals #fail #zoo #nature

The Panda Factories

In the 1990s, China began sending pandas to foreign zoos to be bred, in the hope that future generations could be released into the wild. It hasn’t gone as planned.

^{Mara Hvistendahl (The New York Times)}