(Newswire.net — August 30, 2014) — Not only it was a phantom pregnancy, but zookeepers suspect the panda, Ai Hin, may have been faking it, to improve her quality of life, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding expert told Xinhua on Monday.
According to Xinhua, Ai Hin, age 6, had shown signs of pregnancy, including a change in appetite, moving less and an increase in progestational hormone in July, but after almost two months, she began acting normally again.
As believed to be expecting, the panda are given a single, air-conditioned room, as well as more buns, fruit and bamboo than non-pregnant pandas.
Wu Kongju, an expert at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, told Xinhua that ” Some clever pandas have used their advantage to improve their quality of life”.
However, Claims that a six-year-old panda faked signs of pregnancy to receive better treatment from its conservation centre caregivers have been debunked by one of China’s leading panda experts.
Zhang Heming, director of the China Research and Conservation Centre for the giant panda told the Guardian that Ai Hin’s behavior was probably more of a hormonal issue than a deliberate ruse. “This phenomenon occurs in 10 to 20% of pandas, ” he said. “After the mother panda is inseminated, if her health isn’t so good, the pregnancy will terminate, but she’ll still behave as if she’s pregnant.”
“This phenomenon also happens to wild pandas, if they don’t have enough bamboo to eat.” said Heming.
Giant pandas are notoriously reluctant to breed in captivity and pseudo-pregnancies are common.
The female is fertile for no more than three days a year, and the time span for a pregnancy is from 80 to 200 days, according to the Chengdu base. Scientists will closely monitor behavioral and physiological signs, but it’s often a guessing game.
Even if a pregnancy proves genuine, baby pandas have very low survival rates, according to the Chengdu base, only a third to a half of pandas born in Chinese captivity manage to survive past infancy.
The giant panda is one of the most endangered species on Earth – about 1,600 live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Southwestern China. According to Xinhua, about 300 live in captivity, and they’re notoriously bad at breeding – only about 24% of captive females give birth.