Holla At a Panda

Oh, those pandas, always needing help with their sex game:

Animal handlers in China have developed a "sexercise" program to try to encourage extinction-threatened pandas to overcome their notoriously low sex drives.

Featuring hip and pelvic-strengthening "dances" for male pandas, the program also sees inexperienced pandas watching their older relatives make love to learn a few moves.

The handlers hope to encourage mating among the sex-shy-but-endangered animals, the Chinese state media reported Tuesday. They work at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the southwestern Sichuan province, the China Daily said.

Keepers teach male pandas a dance-like routine to strengthen the pelvic and hip area -- it also boosts the animal's stamina, the paper said.

Poor pandas. Not only do you have to deal with heightened scrutiny surrounding your sex life and your handlers making you watch panda porn to help you get busy. Now they're trying to teach you how to get all freaky deaky on the dance floor while making you watch other pandas --- who may essentially your aunts and uncles --- have sex right in front of you as a means to get you in the mood.

After all of that, it's no wonder why you pandas have low libidos. Performance anxiety, anyone?

I you ask me, I say you leave them in a room with a bottle of tequila and some Barry White/Luther Vandross playing in the background, and let nature take its course.




Props to Ceci for the link. Photo lifted from here.

A Cautionary Tale

In case any of you are having trouble sticking to that "I need to get in better shape" new year's resolution of yours, hopefully this latest development between Thailand's favorite pandas, Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui will give you the sort of motivation you're looking for:

“Chuang Chuang is gaining weight too fast and we found Lin Hui is no longer comfortable with having sex with him,” said the zoo’s chief veterinarian, Kanika Limtrakul, adding that Chuang Chuang weighed 331 pounds while Lin Hui is only 253 pounds.

[...]

The diet plan is the latest in an unsuccessful and often strange campaign by zoo officials to get the two bears to mate.

They have held a mock wedding, announced plans to separate the two to spark a little romance and even talked of introducing panda porn — videos of other pandas mating — to get the pair in the mood.

Poor Chuang Chuang. On second thought, I take it all back.

See, it's this kind of scruitiny that'll drive a panda to the world of eating disorders.


I'm just saying.


(Nicole Richie photo courtesy of TMZ photo galleries. Panda photo courtesy of Reuters/handout and AFP/File/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Caption This Photo

Man. Those pandas just can't catch a break, can they?

After falling asleep late Thursday for the first time since her labor, Ya Ya apparently crushed her newborn while it was nursing, the official Xinhua News Agency said on its Web site.

A zoo handler noticed the cub, which weighed only about three ounces, had fallen away motionless from her mother's nipple, it said. Zoo staff took the cub away while Ya Ya was still asleep and an autopsy showed that its heart, liver and other organs had been crushed.

I hope all of you new mothers and mothers-to-be out there learn the valuable lesson here, which is not to sleep with your baby while nursing it, no matter how much it looks like a white, hairy penis. With a face.


(Photo credit: AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhong Guilin. Post inspired by Ang.)

It's a boy!

Not so fast there, Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui. Don't throw away that panda porn just yet. Keep hope alive, my furry friends:

Six-year-old Zhang Ka delivered the baby, the second born in captivity in the world this year, on Monday at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in the mountainous southwest, Xinhua said in a report late on Monday.

The cub weighed just 218 grams (half a pound), but still became the heaviest panda ever born in captivity, where most cubs are born weighing between 83 and 190 grams, Xinhua said.

"It is very rare for them to be even near 200 grams," it said.

Oh and ladies, by the way, the birthing took 34 hours. I'm just saying.

(Photo credit: REUTERS/China Daily)

Panda hater

Not everyone loves them some pandas:

When Chinese officials unveiled a pair of cubs early this year, calling them "a gift" to the island, the people of Taiwan went wild. Polls say more than 65 percent of Taiwan's population are in favor of accepting the mainland's offer [regarding the "56-year armed standoff between mainland China and Taiwan").

But Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, is urging his government to say no. He fears that the pair would be what the press is calling "Trojan pandas." Skeptics see the animals as a perfect symbol for Beijing: no matter how friendly they look, watch out for their claws. They say it's no coincidence that a mainland-run contest gave them the names Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, echoing the Mandarin word for "reunion": tuanyuan.

Not me man, As you all know, I loves the pandas.

Sexual healing

I wrote earlier about our friends Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui, two pandas at a zoo in Thailand, whose sexin' was like, all the rage.

Unfortunately, the mating was "not successful" - how one measures "successful Panda sex" I have no clue. Nor do I think I want to know. But here's an explanation given by Zoo Administrator Prasertsak Puttrakul: Because pandas live in captivity, they're not surrounded by other pandas mating, so how would they even know that they need to start geting busy? You know, for procreation purposes. (Or maybe a little panda fun?) The "why," if you will.

Judging by this picture, the "how" is, obviously, innate. I mean, looks like they went straight for the panda style. Chuang Chuang knows how she likes it.


Sorry. Anyway.

So to remedy this problem, Puttrakul came up with this solution:

[He] has prepared a DVD of pandas having sexual intercourse to show the couple, hoping the demonstration -- call it panda porn -- will inspire them to make a love connection.

He may have a point here. Let's just hope the soundtrack will sound a little more modern than, well, nevermind.

(Photo credit: Reuters/handout)

Say my name

Since my last post was about sex and libido, I thought I'd end the day with this touching story out of Thailand.

After two years of being strictly platonic, pandas Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui finally got busy.



In case you were wondering:

The pandas started the mating dance Sunday with a mock wrestling bout, according to officials at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand. From there, the pair began sniffing one another on Tuesday and mated later in the day.

"The pandas are very happy. For the last two days, they have made love together," said Rossukhon Chuicomwong, head of public relations for the Chiang Mai Zoo. "We are so happy because maybe we'll have a baby panda soon."

[...]

The Thai press Wednesday was filled with photos of the black and white bears mating. Hundreds of visitors gathered at the zoo to watch the ritual, which officials expect will continue for two or three days.

Here's a picture of Chuang Chuang enjoying the panda version of the post-coital cigarette:



No word yet on whether Chuang Chuang plans to call Lin Hui within the industry-standard two-day waiting period.

(Photo credit: Reuters/handout and AFP/File/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)