FOXSYLVANIA

– – Australia has acquired two giant pandas on loan from China, and the couple has been publicly encouraged to, err, be fruitful and multiply! Wang Wang (“Net Net”) and Funi (“Lucky Girl”) were encouraged by leaders at the Adelaide Zoo to “Look after yourselves, keep healthy and active, eat your greens and maybe, when the time is right, think about starting a family.”

Pandas are notoriously poor breeders, with females having only three days a year in which they can conceive. Artificial insemination has accordingly become a standard practice in breeding captive pandas, of which 120 are in Chinese breeding facilities and zoos and about another 20 in zoos outside China.  Only about 1,600 pandas exist in the wild.

We can, I suppose, be grateful that The Captain and Tennille never wrote a song called “Panda Love…”