After giant panda Yuan Yuan was artificially inseminated in March, her keepers at the Taipei Zoo were hopeful for a baby panda in the near future.
When she started exhibiting symptoms like a thickening of the uterus, loss of appetite, and increased hormone levels, it looked like a little panda bundle of joy was on the way.
Now, Yuan Yuan’s pregnancy-like symptoms have subsided, and keepers are accusing her of faking a pregnancy to get extra treats like buns and fruit.
Expectant pandas are moved into their own, private room with air conditioning and lavished with attention.
“After showing prenatal signs, the [panda] ‘mothers-to-be’ are [pampered]. So some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life,” Wu Kongju, a Chinese Panda researcher said last year.
Yuan Yuan gave birth to a cub in 2013, which made her signs of pregnancy this time around especially encouraging. Despite this, an ultrasound revealed that she is not expecting currently.
Last year, another panda, named Ai Hin, was accused of doing the same fake act at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.
But not all panda experts agree that Yuan Yuan, or any panda, would fake a pregnancy.
Zhang Heming, who leads the China Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda, said last year that “pseudo pregnancies” occur regularly in pandas.
In fact, he called the situation “more of a hormonal issue than a deliberate ruse,” and explained that “This phenomenon occurs in 10 to 20 percent of pandas. 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.”
