Stupid Sexy Pandas

November 29, 2017 4:42 PM

Captive breeding programs rescue animals from extinction at the potential cost of creating a semi-domesticated species. Maggie Koerth-Baker ponders the consequences in The Complicated Legacy Of A Panda Who Was Really Good At Sex.
Also, a photo essay in The Atlantic showing costumed researchers in Sichuan pandering to their charges.
[via Boing Boing]
posted by Joe in Australia (19 comments total)

the costume photo essay is everything, oh my god. the first pandababy has a look of utter incomprehension and betrayal on its silly little face as it is being lowered into the basket.
posted by poffin boffin at 4:46 PM on November 29, 2017 [5 favorites]

Those “workers wearing panda masks” will turn out to be Batman villains, mark my words.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:35 PM on November 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm definitely in the Let The Motherfucking Pandas die camp. This story about this particular stud panda only reinforces that. We desperately need land conservation, water protection, clean air, not to save one cute species to populate our zoos.
posted by latkes at 5:55 PM on November 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

Those things aren't exclusive? The way I read the article, land conservation is part of how we can ensure the survival of the panda? Integral, even?
posted by AnhydrousLove at 6:24 PM on November 29, 2017 [17 favorites]

Vice versa - the survival of the panda is how we ensure land conservation. That's the whole charismatic megafauna argument in a nutshell.

Loved this post and all the precious little round baby pandas. Thank you for posting, Joe in Australia!
posted by capricorn at 7:52 PM on November 29, 2017 [13 favorites]

I feel the need to point out that no actual pandering is going on in that photo essay, which given the topic is panda breeding is not out of the question.

A few weeks ago I had to explain to my small child how birth works and he's into pandas so I looked up a bunch of panda videos to show him and I found one where baby panda actually catches some air on the way out.
posted by bq at 8:30 PM on November 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm definitely in the Let The Motherfucking Pandas die camp.

this is how i feel abt the human race tbh
posted by poffin boffin at 8:47 PM on November 29, 2017 [14 favorites]

The trouble with charismatic mega fauna (new term for me!) and pandas most specifically is they are preserved in captivity which does nothing to preserve habitat. That's a lot of what's talked about in the FPP.
posted by latkes at 8:52 PM on November 29, 2017

I'm a bad panda with a master planda and the ladies call me TexPan Pan
And the one thing all the ladies know is I'm good at having uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex
I'm good at sex You're bad at sex, I'm good at sex, you're bad at sex I'm good at sex, you're bad at sex I'm good at sex, you're bad at sex...
posted by Huffy Puffy at 9:32 PM on November 29, 2017

Living in DC during many failed attempts at breeding the two Smithsonian Zoo pandas, I was forced to follow the saga of Tai Shan's birth and eventual return to China much more closely than I ever would have wanted. So I thought I knew a fair amount about this issue until reading this article. I'm definitely not in the camp of saving the pandas for our sake or theirs as an isolated activity - but if it can improve land, air, and water qualities in even a bit of the earth, let's do it. We certainly aren't doing it for humanity, so when a charismatic megafauna comes along . . .
posted by perrouno at 4:32 AM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

I like red pandas better.
Also, I met Maggie Koerth-Baker on the FT-OTZ board a few years back. She is a smart, nice person.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:48 AM on November 30, 2017

Flagged as fantastic for post title alone!
posted by Ziggy500 at 6:05 AM on November 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's also some disagreement over how effective charismatic megafauna are as umbrella species for conservation. For example, you'd think marshalling the charisma of orangutans to conserve primary forest in Indonesia and Malaysia would be easy, and yet Bornean orangutans are among the 25 most endangered primates.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:16 AM on November 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

... and what I meant to follow up with is, there are huge amounts of money devoted to orangutan conservation, but given that these organizations aren't effective at conserving orangutans and their habitat in light of climate change and conversion of forest to palm oil plantations - and they're actively targeting orangutan conservation - imagine how badly the less charismatic and less well known species sharing these habitats are doing. Ecosystem conservation is hard, and I don't know that species-specific conservation efforts are particularly effective. Of course, given the current alternative of doing nothing, who knows.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:24 AM on November 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

So, um...at this point, it seems like a large segment of the panda population shares similar genetic code. Isn't that kind of....bad?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:51 AM on November 30, 2017

Yep.

Animals being bred in captivity through zoos and rehabilitation projects maintain studbooks and species survival plans that work to maximize genetic diversity in current populations given the small number of individuals and the sort of inbreeding that pandas (and lots of other small or relic species) cope with. Folks working with captive endangered species are doing everything they can to ensure as much genetic variation as possible makes it to the next generation, but these are fairly recent advances in captive animal husbandry, so they've only got the current population's genetic diversity to work with.

This led to my favorite zoo internship moment - they were necropsying a male zebra while I was working there one day and my supervisor was on the phone with the zebra SSP coordinator. They determined that that male had sired several babies already and his sperm didn't need to be preserved for artificial insemination. And then I heard her say, "Oh, OK. Well, if we don't need it I guess I'll take the sperm vial out of my bra."
posted by ChuraChura at 7:28 AM on November 30, 2017 [4 favorites]

We certainly aren't doing it for humanity, so when a charismatic megafauna comes along . . .

You must whip it?
posted by haileris23 at 8:29 AM on November 30, 2017 [10 favorites]

In photo 8 you can see that the three feeders in panda suits have partially unzipped Tao Tao's panda suit, to take a blood sample or something. What is Tao Tao inside that suit??
posted by moonmilk at 11:04 AM on November 30, 2017

MetaFilter: I guess I'll take the sperm vial out of my bra
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:09 PM on November 30, 2017