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China's 'Exhausted' Pandas

Endangered bears too tired to propagate species.

It's a cruel irony that nature's most adorable animal steadfastly refuses to make more of itself, even on the brink of extinction. With less than 3,000 giant pandas in the wild, China's Chengdu Giant Panda Research Institute is crucial to preserving the population—but the notoriously picky animals are refusing to play along. This year only four new baby pandas were born after 18 in 2008, a drop off Chinese researchers attributed to the pandas being "too exhausted" to procreate. Half of this year's panda output come from a bear named Li Li, who gave birth to twin females Wen Li and Ya Li over the summer.

Read it at Times of London

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