Inside the persistent myth that giant pandas are bad at sex

Excerpted from INTHE COMPANY OF PANDAS: My Life with the World’s Favorite Bear by Dr. Brandie Smith. Copyright 2026 © by Dr. Brandie Smith. Reprinted by approval of Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & & Schuster, LLC.

WHEN YOU look after pandas, your main obligation is to make more pandas. I was informed point-blank throughout my interviews to end up being manager, “Your task is to get the panda pregnant.” I had a PhD in population genes, and while I ‘d gotten significant experience with endangered-species recreation at the theoretical level, my hands-on experience was restricted. Absolutely nothing assists you adjust rapidly to a brand-new task like being asked to assist the world’s most well-known bear endure as a types.

When I got to the National Zoo, it had actually been nearly 3 years because the birth of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian’s very first cub, Tai Shan. There are typically 2 years in between births, so the state of mind at the zoo was not stressed, however figured out. I was contributed to the weekly panda conference, that included the manager, keepers, vets, researchers, and even the zoo’s director– at the time I began it was John Berry, however segued to Dennis Kelly in 2010– as we read every information of the breeding and birth strategies, making micro changes, to make sure not simply an effective fertilization, however that Mei Xiang had whatever an expectant panda mom required to be delighted. It was as if we might group-project a healthy cub into presence. And although I comprehended the extreme desire to see a panda cub, I rapidly found out the interest focuses not simply on the offspring, however consists of the reproductive act itself. And that level of in-depth attention was not simply for the panda experts, however for the enthusiasts. I consider pandas as being more charming than appealing, however for some factor, an excellent lots of people are consumed with their sex lives.

In 1972, when President Nixon called The Washington Star to share the news that Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing would be pertaining to the capital, he informed the press reporter, “The issue, nevertheless, with pandas is that they do not understand how to mate. “Director Ted Reed understood the “sex issue” and figured out to get ahead of it. As part of the preparations for the pandas’ arrival, despite the fact that the set were still too young to reproduce, he worked with the zoo’s very first female researcher, Devra Kleiman, as a reproductive zoologist. Throughout the years, he composed often to Smithsonian Secretary S.Dillon Ripley about the zoo’s efforts to reproduce the animals and wryly acknowledged his uncommon fixation. Reed saw the yearslong failure not simply as his own (specifically after optimistically appealing child pandas for the bicentennial year in 1976) however a lot more usually as a “defeat for machismo; an utter embarrassment for all zoo males.” That these 2 really dignified guys were corresponding backward and forward in which the director described himself as the Smithsonian’s “resident sex maniac,” and, later on, how he was sorry for that “the terrific panda sex orgy of 1979” had actually not emerged, was not improper.

Speaking about sex is required for individuals accountable for reproducing threatened types, specifically when you’re discussing the essential work of making more pandas. When it concerns pandas, it appears that everybody’s inhibitions fall away. Other types do not get that pass. At the zoo, we see moms and dads’ natural modesty begin as they explain an elephant’s erection as an additional tail or leg, or they hurry their kids past a set of amorous orangutans that are “simply playing.” When it comes to pandas, even if the animals are in the middle of trying the act, a large swath of the public, consisting of households, will line up to see and cheer them on.

Perhaps it’s due to the fact that they’re so adorable that they appear more pure than prurient. I believe the majority of our fixation with the sex lives of huge pandas stems from the urban myth that, when it concerns the essentials of recreation, these bears are entirely unaware. This is demonstrably incorrect since modern-day pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleucaand their precursors have actually been on the world for countless years. In the wild, the panda life-span is approximately fifteen to twenty years, so if you do the mathematics, you can see that it took a great deal of effective panda procreation to bring the types into the twenty-first century. Where did this concept stem? And why does it continue?

In the Company of Pandas: Exploring the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Bear by Dr. Brandie Smith is readily available any place books are offered on November 10.

About the Author

Dr. Brandie Smith is the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. With years of experience in animal care, preservation, and zoo management, she has actually managed vital reproducing programs for threatened types and has actually personally seen a few of the most remarkable minutes in panda preservation history at one of America’s premier zoos. Initially from Indiana, Pennsylvania, she matured around animals and started her expert profession as an intern at the Pittsburgh Zoo and the National Zoo.