The Taipei Zoo on Wednesday and Thursday performed two artificial inseminations of its female giant panda, which is in its high fertility season, in the hopes of conceiving a new cub for its panda family.
Zookeepers on Feb. 9 started noticing signs of impending estrus and ovulation in the panda, known as Yuan Yuan (圓圓), including vulvar swelling, scent-marking behaviors, playing in the water and restlessness, the zoo said in a news release on Friday.
As the chance of ovulation would be highest when Yuan Yuan’s hormone levels peaked on Thursday, the zoo performed artificial inseminations on Wednesday and Thursday with semen collected from Tuan Tuan (團團), its male giant panda, the zoo said.
Photo provided by Taipei Zoo
During previous panda mating seasons, Chinese experts from the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda visited the zoo, but they could not travel to Taiwan this year due to an outbreak of COVID-19 in China, it said.
A team set up a videoconference with the center and researcher Wang Chengdong (王承東) providing advice on breeding, it added.
On Wednesday afternoon, the team inseminated Yuan Yuan with part of the semen collected hours earlier from Tuan Tuan, the zoo said, adding that a sample had a sperm count of approximately 400 million, with 96 percent sperm motility.
On Thursday morning, the team inserted the remaining semen, which had a sperm count of about 450 million and sperm motility of 93 percent, it said.
In the afternoon, the zoo placed the pandas together, hoping to increase the odds of fertilization through natural mating, but with no results, as they either lost interest in mating or simply did not know how, it added.
Besides the tasks related to artificial insemination, the two pandas also received annual dental and abdominal check-ups, the zoo said.
Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan were gifted by China to Taiwan in 2008. Their only cub, Yuan Zai (圓仔), was born in 2013 at the zoo following artificial insemination.
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