‘National Zoo – Resting Her Head – 12-30-09’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’
Sadly, the news from the National Zoo this morning is that Mei Xiang was not pregnant with a new younger sibling to now-absent Tai Shan. The Panda pregnancy process is fairly opaque, even with trained veterinarians involved, and pseudo-pregnancies are the norm with these creatures. There will be no Butterstick II: Electric Bugaloo, for which we are all quite sad. Bad pandas are cute as buttons. Adult pandas? Meh.
The Panda enclosure opens again this morning, if you wanted to let Mei Xiang and Tian Tian know your feelings on the matter.
Stupid welfare pandas.
Update: The folks at the Zoo today shared a bit about what they know about panda pregnancy in this video:
Fascinating stuff. Thanks, Smithsonian!
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If it helps, the zoo is also on lion cub watch. I prefer lions to pandas any day of the week.
I think Pandas are done existing on Earth and we should let them go. The process of artificially impregnating a panda bothers me. Imagine If you were the last human girl on Earth and the guy in the next cage was gay and in rolls a team of pandas to impregnate you. I know. It sucks.
I’m sorry this isn’t Mei Xiang’s year to be a mommy again, she was so good at it! I don’t supposed test-tube fertilization is an option, so long as it isn’t harmful to Mei…?