Captive Breeding

Captive breeding

Given the dangerously low numbers of giant pandas in the wild, few would disagree with the principle that using captive pandas to increase the number of them. Attempts to breed pandas in captivity in China began in 1955, but it was not until eight years later, on 9 September 1963, that Ming Ming the first ever captive-bred giant panda, was born in Beijing zoo.

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Mother with captive-bred juvenile in Chengdu Zoo in China, one of the world’s most successful captive breeding centers

There are a lot of difficulties in breeding captive pandas, especially breeding those who were taken from the wild as young cubs. They had never socialized with other pandas and had probably either not learned or had forgotten the appropriate response when they meet a strange giant panda of the opposite sex. So the giant pandas may appear more interested in soliciting the attentions of their human keepers than in mating with their own species. Added to this were the problems created by the animals’ very value and scarcity. Artificial insemination was considered when the captive female does not response to mate with the male in her oestrus, but it would have involved anaesthetizing the male to collect sperm, a risk that the zoos were not prepared to take. Moreover, subsequent experience has shown that very few males are capable of breeding in captivity.

Later, the zoos dared to use artificial insemination to breed giant pandas. In 1982, the first cubs conceived by artificial insemination outside China were born in Madrid Zoo.