Gao Gao a wild born panda, now living at the San Diego Zoo with his partner, Bai Yun, have had no problems in the mating category. Together they have had three healthy cubs born at the San Diego Zoo.
I recently came across an article about pandas in "The Herb Quarterly" (Winter 2007)the other day, to my delight. You may or may not have seen the article where the Chinese zoo scientist had played a video of pandas mating to a couple of male pandas in order to get them interested in mating. They have also tried using Viagra. Apparently, the two male pandas over in the Shanghai Zoo in China still need some more help in this area so the zoo scientist are going to try some herbs. Zhuang Zhuang and Peng Peng both males, still have no sexual appetite for mating with the female panda in residence. So handlers at the zoo are consulting with experts about possible herbal treatments.
With their numbers in the wild being estimated to be around 1,600, China has been breeding the bears with artificial insemination with good success. One of the dilemmas though is the pandas living in captivity don't have the same sexual prowess as those living in the wild.
Humans have used Chinese herbs, including ginseng, romania and epicedium for thousands of years as aphrodisiacs and sexual tonics. The zoo hopes some of these powerful plants can do the same for the pandas.
