Dr.

Meg Perret
“Why Do Pandas Have So Little Sex?”
Representations of Giant Panda Reproduction in Zoo Captive-Breeding Programs

“Pandas are so stupid about sex that they just don’t have what it takes for a species to stay afloat.”
—The Washington Post

Abstract: Giant pandas are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. Captive breeding programs
have sought to improve the reproductive success of captive giant pandas by using assisted
reproductive technologies, administering Viagra to the pandas, showing the pandas pornography, and
arranging panda “speed dating.” This chapter analyzes representations of captive panda
reproduction in captive breeding programs between 1985 and 2020 in popular culture and scientific
research conducted by conservation biologists in the U.S. and China. Between 1985 and 2015, both
scientists and the media characterized low male libido in which male pandas almost never showed
sexual interest in females in captivity as the primary causes of poor reproductive
outcomes. Then, following a series of studies conducted by researchers at the San Diego Zoo,
scientists instead emphasized the issue of mate compatibility in determining captive breeding
outcomes between 2015 and 2020. Yet, media narratives remained focused on male panda’s sexual
deficiency until 2018 when right-wing media outlets described male pandas as “sex crazed.” Using
methods from feminist theory, this chapter examines the influence of cultural norms of gender and
sexuality on the history of representations of captive panda reproduction. While previous scholars
have analyzed panda exhibitions in zoos, representations of panda reproduction in scientific research,
popular scientific magazines, and documentary film remain understudied. This case study has
implications for understanding how representations of endangered species are entangled with
narratives about the future of human gender and sexuality.

This is a chapter from my first book project:

Gender and Sexuality in U.S. Biodiversity Discourse examines the gendered rhetoric and images that
biodiversity scientists use to frame their research on endangered species. I analyze the relationship
between such scientific rhetoric and the representations of extinction in popular culture using textual
analysis and interviews with scientists. Through a series of case studies, the manuscript examines
gendered rhetoric in debates surrounding endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), captive breeding
programs, the climate crisis, and invasive species. Using frameworks from feminist science studies, I find
that cultural ideas of gender and sexuality influence how scientists narrate their research on species
extinctions and, conversely, that scientific rhetoric shapes discussions in popular culture about the future
of biodiversity and humanity.

 Perret Draft 1

Introduction

Giant pandas are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. As the symbol of the environmental

nonprofit, World Wildlife Fund, the giant panda has possibly raised more funds for conservation

than all other species combined.1 Yet, scientists still struggle to get them to reproduce reliably in

captive breeding programs. In order to improve the reproductive success of pandas, scientists

have used assisted reproductive technologies, administered Viagra to the pandas, increased

panda sexual stamina through “sexercises,” and arranged panda “speed dating.”2 Further, to

encourage sexual interest in male pandas, conservation organizations have collaborated with the

pornography website PornHub to create a database of videos of panda-costumed humans having

sex.3 In an animated promotional video for the PornHub collaboration, a sad female panda with a

big pink bow struggles to get a male panda interested in sex, meanwhile he turns from her to

watch TV and munch on bamboo.4 Relatedly, at the crossroads of environmentalism and human

reproductive politics, condom company sells “pandoms,” or condoms with pandas printed on

them, and donates a portion of their profits to endangered species conservation and to the

distribution of condoms in developing countries.5

1
The title is from: Edward Wong, “Lousy Libidos: Why Do Pandas Have So Little Sex?,” New
York Times, September 30, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/world/what-in-the-world/lousy-
libidos-why-do-pandas-have-so-little-sex.html. The epigraph is from: Rick Weiss, “For Zookeepers, the
Obsession with Survival Has One Focus,” Washington Post, January 10, 2001,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/01/10/for-zookeepers-the-obsession-with-
survival-has-one-focus/db689ef5-d4c7-4cc9-9916-bf6e6cd63101/.
2
“Panda Porn and Speed Dating Key to Species’ Survival,” ABC News, May 24, 2017,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-24/pandas-shown-breeding-animals-in-research-program/8551190.
When I asked biologist Meghan Martin-Wintle about if pandas thought that the people in panda suits were
actually pandas, she replied that she has not seen panda porn used in the zoos she has collaborated with.
3
PornHub, “Panda Style,” video, March 16–April 17, 2014,
https://www.pornhub.com/cares/panda-style.
4
PornHub, “Panda Style.” The narrator asks, “How can you help pandas reproduce? Well, you can
help PornHub create panda style porn!”
5
The company hopes to intervene into extinction and human population politics and illustrates its
website with evolutionary imagery of a series of babies evolving from pandas to orangutans to humans;
 Perret Draft 2

Figure 1: “Make Love, Save Pandas! Panda Style,” Promotional material for Pornhub “Panda
Porn” Project

Reports of panda’s sexual incompetence spread throughout popular culture, such as a

YouTube video, Pandas Are Worse at Sex Than You, which relays that male pandas have tried to

mate with an ear or foot, and that males have disproportionately small penises and tire easily

during mating.6 With New York Times headlines such as “Lousy Libido: Why Do Pandas Have

So Little Sex” and popular-science articles such as “The Complicated Sex Lives of Giant

Pandas,” media depictions often use gendered rhetoric to emphasize difficulties in panda

reproduction.7

Conservationists consider the giant panda to be possibly the most adored zoo animal in

the world.8 Endemic to the mountains of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi provinces in China, the

Hobby Link Japan, “Panpan: Panda Condoms,” accessed June 15, 2022, https://www.hlj.com/panpan-
panda-condoms-1box-48pcs-nkn67405.
6
Animalogic, “Pandas Are Worse at Sex Than You,” video, series Animal Attractions, written and
produced by Dylan Dubeau, produced by Alex Sopinka, filmed and edited by Andrew Strapp, hosted by
Danielle Dufault, May 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IToO8mlYXzY.
7
Joseph Castro, “The Complicated Sex Lives of Giant Pandas,” Live Science, September 27, 2016,
https://www.livescience.com/56269-animal-sex-giant-pandas.html; Wong, “Lousy Libidos: Why Do
Pandas Have So Little Sex?”
8
Avie Schneider, “Agreed, Baby Pandas Are Cute. But Why?,” NPR, January 10, 2013,
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/10/169057467/agreed-baby-pandas-are-cute-but-why.
 Perret Draft 3

giant panda is also a flagship species, or a species selected as an ambassador for conservation of

a whole geographic region. Chinese Wolong National Nature Reserve, Smithsonian National

Zoo, and San Diego Zoo have collaborated on developing assisted reproductive technologies and

captive breeding programs for the giant panda. The amount of resources dedicated to the captive

breeding of pandas has been a topic of controversy, with British naturalist Christopher Packham

offering to “eat the last panda” if doing so would free up conservation funding for other species.9

This chapter considers debates in biodiversity science and the media surrounding why

giant pandas struggle to reproduce reliably in captive-breeding programs in zoos. Through

examination of this case study, this chapter considers how cultural norms of gender and sexuality

influence how scientists, zoos, and popular culture describe the reproduction of endangered

species. My methodology draws upon scholarship in feminist science studies that uses rhetorical

analysis to study the inextricability of scientific and cultural discourses, especially around issues

of gender, sexuality, and race.10 This chapter focuses on the interplay between scientific research

in conservation biology and popular science sources that seek to educate the public about

conservation issues, including such magazines as National Geographic and Scientific American,

and publications by the San Diego Zoo and the Smithsonian National Zoo. I conducted discourse

analysis of representations of captive-panda reproduction between 1963 and 2021, with the

majority of documents analyzed dated between 2000 and 2018. I analyzed two science

documentary films, The Panda Baby (2001), produced by the San Diego Zoo, and The Life of

Rare Pandas (2018), created by National Geographic. I conducted in-depth 45-minute semi-

structured interviews with panda scientists at the San Diego Zoo.11

9
David Owen, “Bears Do It,” New Yorker, August 26, 2013,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/02/bears-do-it.
10
Haraway, Primate Visions; Subramaniam, Ghost Stories for Darwin.
11
I interviewed Meghan Martin-Wintle and Ron Swaisgood.
 Perret Draft 4

Most peer-reviewed scientific literature on the reproduction of pandas in captivity

between 1985 and 2015 cites abnormal male reproductive behavior, especially either lack of

male libido or excessive aggression of the male toward the female, as the primary cause of failed

mating. While much less research focuses on maternal care, high infant mortality was also

considered an issue for captive-breeding programs. By 2015, there was a shift in scientific

research that instead emphasized mate compatibility as the central issue in panda captive

breeding. Conservation biologist Meghan Martin-Wintle and the San Diego Zoo were

instrumental in the development of this research trajectory. Throughout the history of scientific

research in this subfield, scientists have referred to the importance of developing ecologically

informed captive-breeding programs that mimic the social and sexual systems of wild pandas.

Yet, as I show through my analysis in this chapter, both scientific and popular-science

representations persistently described the behavior of captive pandas through reference to human

gender and sexual stereotypes that are normalized and naturalized. Additionally, I find that

biodiversity discourse often frames the future of endangered species with cultural anxieties about

an imperiled future for masculinity and heterosexuality.

This chapter makes scholarly interventions into feminist science studies and critical

animal studies. In an examination of pandas at the Smithsonian National Zoo in the 1970s and

1980s, Lisa Uddin argues that the zoo’s exhibit emphasizes nationalist heterosexual reproductive

anxieties, which the presenters project onto the pandas as objects of nation-building.12 Analyzing

the panda exhibit at the Toronto National Zoo in 2013, Marianna Szczygielska describes how the

display projects cultural ideas of race and sexuality onto the pandas as a fantasy of controlled,

12
Lisa Uddin, “Panda Gardens and Public Sex at the National Zoological Park,” Public, 2010,
https://public.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/public/article/view/32015.
 Perret Draft 5

idealized Asian immigrant sexualities.13 While previous scholarship concentrates on

representations of pandas in zoo exhibitions, this chapter examines the history of scientific

research on captive pandas and its relationship to depictions of pandas in popular science. This is

also one of the first published analyses focused on pandas at the San Diego Zoo.

Historians such as Nigel Rothfels and Elizabeth Hanson have shown that modern zoos

began integrating conservation goals with their existing commitments to entertainment and

scientific research in the middle of the twentieth century.14 My discussion of scientific research

on panda captive-breeding programs contributes to debates in animal studies on the role of zoos

in shaping the future of endangered species in the context of a biodiversity crisis.15 Moreover,

with a focus on popular-science rhetoric, my analysis of sexuality and reproduction in

representations of the future of endangered species builds upon previous work by scholars in

media studies who have analyzed depictions of zoo animals in popular culture.16

Section I details the history of research on the reproduction of giant pandas in captivity in

China and the United States between 1963—when captive-breeding centers were first

established—and the present day. Section II examines scientific and popular representations

between 1985 and 2020 of problems in male panda reproductive behaviors—typically, lack of

male libido or excessive male aggression toward females—that prevent successful mating in

captivity. I show how scientific and media depictions of male pandas often reference cultural

13
Marianna Szczygielska, “Pandas and the Reproduction of Race and Heterosexuality in the Zoo,”
in Zoo Studies: A New Humanities, ed. Tracy McDonald and Daniel Vandersommers (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2019), 211–36.
14
Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo, Animals, History, Culture
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), Kindle; Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions:
Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), Kindle.
15
Carrie Friese, Cloning Wild Life: Zoos, Captivity, and the Future of Endangered Animals (New
York: New York University Press, 2013).
16
Noël Sturgeon, Environmentalism in Popular Culture.
 Perret Draft 6

ideas about the “naturalness” of male sexual aggression. Section III scrutinizes scientific

research on the importance of mate choice in panda reproduction, which has been incredibly

successful in increasing the chances of mating in captivity. I examine this research in relation to

portrayals of mate choice in terms of heteronormative romance in popular science and

documentary films.

History of Scientific Research on Panda Reproduction

Originally indexed in 1965 with the IUCN red list, a global database of species

considered to be at risk for extinction, the giant panda has since become an icon for biodiversity

conservation. The reproduction of captive panda populations became a target for scientific

management in China in the 1960s. Captive-breeding centers for pandas were first established in

1963, the same year as the first managed-care birth, at the Peking Zoo in Beijing, China.17 This

first cub, named Ming-Ming, was born on September 9, 1963, by natural mating in captivity.18

The use of artificial insemination in panda captive-breeding programs began later, in 1965, and

was initially unsuccessful at producing cubs.19

Captive-breeding programs in zoos in China and abroad had new successes in the 1970s

and 1980s. In 1972, the Chinese government gifted President Nixon a pair of pandas named

Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing; they were housed at the Smithsonian National Zoo, which then

became the first U.S. zoo to exhibit giant pandas.20 In 1978, Yuan Jing became the first panda

17
George B. Schaller, The Giant Pandas of Wolong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
18
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong.
19
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong.
20
There was some concern among those in the U.S. that China might send two animals of the same
sex, and then anxiety arose over inability to tell which panda was male and which was female. Newspaper
articles bemoaned the use of Chinese names that prevented interested “fans” in the U.S. from easily
knowing the sex of each panda.
 Perret Draft 7

successfully produced by artificial insemination at the Peking Zoo.21 A couple of years later, the

first cub resulting from artificial insemination with frozen sperm was born at the Chengdu Zoo in

China in 1980.22 After a decade of trial and error, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing at the Smithsonian

National Zoo mated naturally for the first time in 1983.23 The pair produced four cubs between

1984 and 1989, although none of the cubs survived.24

In 1992, the San Diego Zoo’s Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species

initiated a collaboration with Chinese captive-breeding centers to help improve reproduction in

captivity.25 The San Diego Zoo was the first U.S. institution to be approved for the importation

of pandas under the new guidelines created by the American Association of Zoological Parks and

Aquariums (AAZPA) and IUCN, which specified that the exportation of pandas from China to

foreign countries must involve research that directly benefited species conservation.26 In 1995,

the U.S. Department of the Interior approved the first five years of a twelve-year loan to the San

Diego Zoo of a pair of pandas for research on panda communication and reproduction.27

American zoos have since been instrumental in the implementation of “species survival plans”

which were developed with the IUCN and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), an

international organization of zoos, with the goal of using captive breeding to save species from

extinction.28

21
David E. Wildt et al., eds., Giant Pandas: Biology, Veterinary Medicine and Management
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Kindle.
22
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas.
23
Susan Lumpkin and John Seidensticker, Smithsonian Book of Giant Pandas (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002).
24
Lumpkin and Seidensticker, Smithsonian Book of Giant Pandas.
25
San Diego Zoological Society, The Panda Baby, video, 2001,
https://archive.org/details/ThePandaBaby.
26
Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species (CRES) Newsletter, Spring 1995,
https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13960/t8kf0pk0n/.
27
Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species Newsletter, Spring 1995.
28
Association of Zoos and Aquariums, “Species Survival Plan Programs,” accessed July 2, 2022,
https://www.aza.org/species-survival-plan-programs?locale=en.
 Perret Draft 8

In the 1990s, as part of the collaboration between the San Diego Zoo and Wolong,

scientists created new protocols for caring for when pandas give birth to twins. Scientists

developed the method of “twin swapping,” which involves rotating each cub between maternal

rearing and the nursey, which was “highly successful,” with nearly all the cubs surviving, and is

largely responsible for the growth of the captive panda population.29

China expanded its captive-breeding programs in the 1990s, establishing three large

breeding programs for giant pandas in China during that period: the China Conservation and

Research Center for the Giant Panda in the Woolong Reserve, the Chengdu Research Base of

Giant Panda Breeding, and the Beijing Peking Zoo.30 The largest and most successful of these

centers is the Woolong Reserve, which also provides a study population for much of the research

on captive pandas. Eighteen individuals were taken from the wild from 1991 through 1996 for

these captive-breeding programs.31 With improved approaches to artificial reproductive

technologies (ART) and infant rearing, the number of pandas at the captive-breeding programs in

China has increased exponentially.32 The first surviving cub outside of China was born using the

methods of artificial insemination at the San Diego Zoo in 1999.33 China owns all pandas that are

loaned to or born at foreign zoos34.

In 1996, the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens requested advice from the

IUCN–World Conservation Species Survival Commission, Conservation Breeding Specialist

29
William Holt, Janine Brown, and Pierre Comizzoli, eds., Reproductive Sciences in Animal
Conservation (New York: Springer International AG, 2019), ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harvard-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5888989.
30
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas.
31
Songster, Panda Nation.
32
Songster, Panda Nation.
33
Karyl Carmignani, “Panda Cub Number One,” ZOONOOZ [San Diego Zoo], March 29, 2019,
https://zoonooz.sandiegozoo.org/2019/03/29/panda-cub-number-one/.
34
Songster, Panda Nation.
 Perret Draft 9

Group, in order to “resolve health and reproductive problems facing giant pandas.”35 The book

that summarizes the findings of this collaboration, Giant Pandas: Biology, Veterinary Medicine,

and Management (2006), is the first book devoted to captive panda management and breeding.36

Scientists involved with the captive breeding of giant pandas are a multidisciplinary team of

reproductive scientists, conservation biologists, veterinary scientists, and animal behavior

biologists who conduct research primarily in zoos. While this chapter focuses on the case study

of giant pandas, difficulties with captive breeding are not unique to that species, as zoos have

struggled to get other endangered species such as cheetahs to reproduce in captivity.37

Male Libido: Indifference or Aggression?

Scientific research on wild giant pandas began in the 1970s.38 As one of the pioneers of

panda research, George B. Schaller led a research collaboration between the World Wildlife

Fund and the New York Zoological Society.39 As a mammologist and conservation biologist who

studies African and Asian mammals, Schaller spent most of his career working as a field

biologist and is known for his observations of pandas, lions, and gorillas.40 He served as the

director of the New York Zoological Society’s International Conservation Program, which was

later called the Wildlife Conservation Society.

35
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas, xxi.
36
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas.
37
Leslie Kaufman, “Date Night at the Zoo, If Rare Species Play Along,” New York Times, July 5,
2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/matchmaking-at-zoos-is-rising-for-threatened-
species.html.
38
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) Fact Sheet: Summary,
ca. 2001–2018, last updated March 9, 2021, http://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/giantpanda.
39
The change in the IUCN risk status of pandas was controversial among conservationists;
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong.
40
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong.
 Perret Draft 10

Schaller’s first book on pandas, published in 1985, was The Giant Pandas of Wolong.41

In the book, Schaller observes that pandas have a polyandrous mating system, with male

competition in which the dominant male mates with a female in estrus. Schaller also notes that

females are seasonally estrus, with a window of fertility that lasts two to three days per year. The

book documents two observational events in which he witnessed panda mating behavior.

Because pandas are rare and difficult to observe in nature, these observations still constitute the

entirety of biologists’ understandings of wild pandas’ mating system.

In his 1985 book, Schaller argues that lack of “synchronization” between the

reproductive states of males and females causes male sexual aggression and low libido in

captivity. As Schaller describes in his recommendations for captive-breeding programs:

“Remaining apart, but near each other until the female is fully receptive and subordinate to the

male, a pair is likely to have less quarrelsome interactions.”42 This framing draws upon sexist

ideas of female sexual passivity and submission, and resonates with findings in previous feminist

scholarship that document how scientists impose gender norms onto animals and interpret

observations of animal reproduction through the lens of gender and sexual normatively.43

Well into the 1990s, captive-breeding programs struggled to get pandas to mate

“naturally” in captivity.44 In 1996, the IUCN Captive Breeding Specialist Group met in Chengdu,

China, where they estimated that only six living males in captivity had ever mated naturally.

Similarly, Lindburg, Huang, and Huang estimated that only 30% of living males in captivity had

41
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong.
42
Schaller, Giant Pandas of Wolong, 187.
43
Haraway, Primate Visions.
44
In biodiversity discourse, mating “naturally” generally references reproduction without artificial
insemination.
 Perret Draft 11

ever mated naturally.45 The San Diego Zoo, the Smithsonian Zoo, and the Chinese Wolong

Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda are the three primary institutions that

orchestrated scientific research on panda reproduction in captivity. Research on giant panda

reproduction is notably interdisciplinary, including scientists in endocrinology, reproductive

biology, animal behavior, mammalogy, and conservation biology. Trained as an animal

behaviorist and biological anthropologist, Donald Lindburg, the head of the Office of Giant

Panda Conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, managed the zoo’s international

collaborations with the Chinese Wolong Nature Reserve, including the twelve-year loan of

pandas for scientific research on panda reproduction in captivity. This research was undertaken

in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,

the Chinese State Forestry Administration, and the IUCN.

Early research on captive panda mating attributes the lack of reproductive success to

male aggression toward females and to male sexual indifference. As the result of a collaboration

between researchers at the San Diego Zoo and Chinese scientists, Zhang, Swaisgood, and Zhang

evaluated the behavioral factors influencing reproductive success and failure in captive giant

pandas by conducting surveys of reproductive behavior at the Wolong Reserve.46 Zhang and

colleagues argue that “the primary factor that limits mating success is a lack of male sexual

motivation and/or copulatory proficiency.”47 As the first survey of captive giant panda

reproduction, the study finds: “Most instances of mating failure were attributed to male behavior.

45
D. G. Lindburg, X. Huang, and S. Huang, “Reproductive Performance of Giant Panda Males in
Chinese Zoos,” in International Symposium on the Protection of the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda
melanoleuca), ed. A. Zhang and G. He (Chengdu, China: Sichuan Publishing House of Science and
Technology, 1998), 67–71.
46
Guiquan Zhang, Ronald R. Swaisgood, and Hemin Zhang, “Evaluation of Behavioral Factors
Influencing Reproductive Success and Failure in Captive Giant Pandas,” Zoo Biology 23, no. 1 (2004):
15–31.
47
Zhang, Swaisgood, and Zhang, “Evaluation of Behavioral Factors,” 28.
 Perret Draft 12

In nearly half of mating failures, the male mounted but did not copulate. In about one-third of

mating failures, the male lacked sexual motivation, and showed excessive aggression 20% of the

time.”48 The failed matings were the occurrence of sexual mounting without penetration, which

indicates that the male “was only marginally sexually aroused and/or appears to lack the

motivation to persist in achieving intromission.”49

A 2001 documentary produced by the San Diego Zoo titled The Panda Baby documents

the birth of the first panda baby at the San Diego Zoo’s captive-breeding program for giant

pandas.50 Much of the film focuses on the difficulties of getting the female panda, Bai Yun, and

the male panda, Shi Shi, to reproduce. In portraying the initial attempts at introducing Bai Yun to

Shi Shi for mating, the documentary narrates how “she does her best to attract him” but “each

time he rejects her.”51 Donald Lindburg says that this was a “supreme disappointment.”52 He

continues, “What will it take to get this male interested in her? It is as though his brain had been

short circuited in some way.”53 The documentary shows a news clip from spring 1998 that says:

“She’s in the mood but he could care less. But that’s panda love at the San Diego Zoo.”54

Media articles in the 2000s similarly focused on the low libidos of male pandas. For

example, in 2010, Scientific American draws on stereotypes of masculinity in writing that “From

a human perspective, the notion of a male who is only interested in sex for a short period of time

48
Zhang, Swaisgood, and Zhang, “Evaluation of Behavioral Factors,” 15.
49
Zhang, Swaisgood, and Zhang, “Evaluation of Behavioral Factors,” 21.
50
San Diego Zoological Society, The Panda Baby, video, 2001,
https://archive.org/details/ThePandaBaby.
51
San Diego Zoological Society, Panda Baby.
52
San Diego Zoological Society, Panda Baby.
53
San Diego Zoological Society, Panda Baby.
54
San Diego Zoological Society, Panda Baby.
 Perret Draft 13

each year is laughable. But not all male mammals are ready to go at it wherever, whenever.”55

Similarly, the Washington Post writes that scientists can “only guess” why “captive male pandas

so often respond to fertile female with hostility instead of hugs—or worse yet, by yawning and

walking away. So abiding is romantic ennui among captive male pandas that some scientists

have actually considered slipping the big brutes some Viagra.”56 The article continues that some

people consider pandas to be a “failure of evolution,” doomed to extinction in part because their

social and sexual needs are so specialized.57 According to the article, others say that pandas are

“so stupid about sex that they just don’t have what it takes for a species to stay afloat.”58 The

article quotes biologist Ron Swaisgood, of the San Diego Zoo’s Center for Reproduction of

Endangered Species, refuting these claims and explaining that describing pandas as sexually

incompetent is “an older idea based on the early failings in captivity.”59

In an analysis of cultural discourse, feminist scholar Lisa Uddin argues that male pandas

such as Hsing-Hsing at the Smithsonian National Zoo have been portrayed as emasculated

because they are unable to mate naturally with females.60 Zhang, Swaisgood, and Zhang’s

portrayals of abnormalities in male panda reproductive behavior also inadvertently resonate with

the underlying gendered narrative that portrays male pandas as sexually deficient because of

their lack of aggression. This reinforces sexual stereotypes of men as being more sexually

aggressive and having higher libidos than women. Moreover, the gendered framings of panda

55
Ferris Jabr, “In the Heat for a Moment: The Male Giant Panda’s Sex Drive Fluctuates to Match
the Female’s Short-Lived Libido,” Scientific American, April 4, 2012,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/male-panda-sex-drive/.
56
Rick Weiss, “For Zookeepers, the Obsession with Survival Has One Focus,” Washington Post,
January 10, 2001, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/01/10/for-zookeepers-the-
obsession-with-survival-has-one-focus/db689ef5-d4c7-4cc9-9916-bf6e6cd63101/.
57
Weiss, “For Zookeepers, the Obsession with Survival Has One Focus.”
58
Weiss, “For Zookeepers, the Obsession with Survival Has One Focus.”
59
Weiss, “For Zookeepers, the Obsession with Survival Has One Focus.”
60
Uddin, “Panda Gardens and Public Sex.”
 Perret Draft 14

mating in zoos reflect how early scientific research was guided by an assumption that captive

males often lacked the “natural” male aggression observed in the wild.

Research in the 2000s found that aggression was a significant factor in determining

mating outcomes. Coedited by Donald Lindburg at the San Diego Zoological Society and Karen

Baragona at the World Wildlife Fund, Giant Pandas: Biology and Conservation report in 2004

on the results of the three-year biomedical survey of China’s captive-breeding population of

pandas.61 Susie Ellis at Conservation International is the lead author on the chapter that

concludes that multiple factors were impeding panda mating in captivity, including unknown

paternity; genetic overrepresentation; poor nutrition; male reproductive health conditions; and

behavioral problems, especially male aggressiveness. They report that male aggression often

limited the introduction of males to females for mating. Seemingly paradoxically, of the twenty-

three behaviorally based personality characteristics assessed using keeper surveys, being wild-

born and aggressiveness contributed most significantly to successful breeding and the

researchers found no significant sex differences. Despite aggression’s often limiting the

introduction to breeding, the survey found that aggressiveness as a personality trait in pandas

increased breeding success if both sexes in the mating encounter were aggressive.

In Giant Pandas: Biology, Veterinary Medicine, and Management, a collaboration

between the Smithsonian National Zoo, San Diego Zoo, and Chinese scientists, Wildt et al. write

that reproduction has been “poor” due to the “lack of male libido or aggressive behaviors

towards conspecific females” that included “injuries that prevented safe introduction for

mating.”62 They conducted a biomedical survey that included 23 behavioral characteristics

61
Donald Lindburg and Karen Baragona, eds., Giant Pandas: Biology and Conservation (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004).
62
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas, loc. 1124 and 1159, Kindle (quote from chapter 3 titled “Factors
limiting reproductive success in the giant panda as revealed by a biomedical survey”).
 Perret Draft 15

evaluated on a continuum based on keeper surveys. Their behavioral survey found that mating

was most likely to occur when both sexes were aggressive but not when only one partner was

aggressive. Wildt et al. conclude: “[A]ggression in captive giant pandas may be a useful

behavioral characteristic for both males and females even though male hyper-aggression has

been cited for breeding failure in captivity.”63 They speculate that males may be aggressive

because of misplaced aggression toward females that would have been naturally expressed as

male competition in the wild, and argue that “it makes sense that a behaviorally aggressive

female is more competent at handling an aggressive male, and perhaps breeding is less

successful when only one of the animals is aggressive.”64 Acknowledging the complexity of

these findings, Wildt et al. write: “Obviously, there is a fine line between ‘healthy’ aggressive

behavioral characteristics, which contribute to successful reproduction and inappropriate

aggressive behaviors that thwart successful mating.”65

Wildt et al. interpret the behavior of captive animals in relation to the behavior of wild

pandas despite the pandas being in a human-dominated environment that drastically alters how

they relate to one another socially. Moreover, depictions of panda mating reference notions of

natural aggression in the wild, despite the paucity of observations of wild-panda mating by field

biologists. Thus, I argue that scientific understandings of wild-panda mating could be

underdetermined by the current evidence available, meaning that more evidence would be

needed to solidify these interpretations of wild-panda mating.66 This rhetoric about male

63
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas, loc. 1175, Kindle (quote from chapter 3 titled “Factors limiting
reproductive success in the giant panda as revealed by a biomedical survey”).
64
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas, loc. 1780, Kindle (Quote from chapter 3 titled “Factors limiting
reproductive success in the giant panda as revealed by a biomedical survey”).
65
Wildt et al., Giant Pandas, loc. 1124, Kindle (Quote from chapter 3 titled “Factors limiting
reproductive success in the giant panda as revealed by a biomedical survey”).
66
For more on the underdetermination, see Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge:
Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
 Perret Draft 16

aggression during mating shares some similarities with 1970s and 1980s sociobiological theories

of the naturalness of male sexual aggression, which at its most extreme describes rape as a

reproductive strategy and aggression in females as an adaptation to avoid rape. Feminist critics

most recently contested these theories after the publication of Thornhill and Palmer’s 2000 book,

A Natural History of Rape, which argues that rape is an evolutionarily adaptive and biologically

determined reproductive strategy widespread throughout the animal kingdom.67

Interestingly, media articles reporting on excessive male panda sexual aggression were

largely absent from popular discourse during the 2000s. Instead, the narrative that captive male

pandas are sexually deficient persisted into the early 2010s. This could be because this narrative

resonates with narratives of masculinity in crisis already present within cultural discourse. For

example, the New York Times ran a story titled “Lousy Libidos: Why Do Pandas Have So Little

Sex?” by Edward Wong.68 The author writes, “Pandas are cuddly, but not to each other. They

muster about as much enthusiasm for sex as a human does for a root canal.”69 Wong continues

that pandas have “very little notion of how to go about it.”70 They conclude, “Captivity is a real

mood-killer.”71 Much of the 2010s discourse documents outlandish efforts of scientists to get

pandas to mate in captivity, including panda porn, speed dating, Viagra, and so on. In a 2010

Scientific American article titled “Porn for Pandas,” author Jason Goldman states that “pandas

are endangered in part because the males often prefer eating to mating.”72 He continues: “[G]iant

67
Cheryl Brown Travis, ed., Evolution, Gender, and Rape (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). It is
important to note that, despite some rhetorical commonalities, conservation biology and sociobiology
have very different political motivations.
68
Wong, “Lousy Libidos.”
69
Wong, “Lousy Libidos,” sec. A, p. 5.
70
Wong, “Lousy Libidos,” sec. A, p. 5.
71
Wong, “Lousy Libidos,” sec. A, p. 5.
72
Jason G. Goldman, “Porn for Pandas!,” The Thoughtful Animal (blog), Scientific American, July
5, 2010, https://blogs-scientificamerican-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/thoughtful-animal/porn-for-
pandas/.
 Perret Draft 17

panda dudes in captivity would rather sit around and munch on bamboo than get it on with

females.”73 The article reports on several measures to try to increase male libido, including

showing the pandas “panda porn” or videos of pandas having sex. As Goldman describes: “In the

privacy of their own cages, captive male pandas watch the sights and sounds of love-making on

TV” (Figure 2, below)74 He also details the pandas’ “sexercises,” or exercises intended to

strengthen the males’ legs to increase sexual stamina. Lastly, scientists choreograph an

“occasional menage a trois,” which is not explained by the article but likely refers to exposing

multiple male pandas to one sexually receptive female.75

Figure 2: Male panda watching pornography from Scientific American 2010

Representations in popular culture also insinuate that these reproductive issues may cause

pandas to go extinct. A 2021 TikTok video by Mamadou Ndiaye opens with the statement that

giant pandas “are bad at literally everything.”76 The video continues: “They are so bad at sex”

73
Goldman, “Porn for Pandas!”
74
Goldman, “Porn for Pandas!”
75
Translation from French: an arrangement (often domestic) where three people share a sexual
relationship.
76
Mamadou Ndiaye, TikTok (@mndiaye_97), accessed June 27, 2021.
 Perret Draft 18

because female pandas are fertile only two days a year. “They are bad at staying alive” because

sometimes the mom “accidentally sits on [her babies] and takes them out.” If pandas have twins,

they will raise one and abandon the other, and thus they “are bad at parenting.” The video

concludes: “Their only real talent is being cute and if they weren’t we wouldn’t be spending

millions of dollars protecting an animal that nature doesn’t have a plan for.” The narrator implies

that pandas are so bad at reproducing that perhaps they are destined for extinction. In a 2016

YouTube video, Pandas Are Worse at Sex Than You, the narrator says, that pandas “seem to

have done everything in their power to go extinct. I am not convinced that pandas want to

live.”77 She relays that male pandas have tried to mate with ear or foot, and that males have

disproportionately small penises and tire easily during mating. Journalist Timothy Lavin wrote a

column for Bloomberg titled “Why I Hate Pandas and You Should Too” writes that pandas are a

“hopeless and wasteful species the world should've given up on long ago.”78

Reports on male panda sexual aggression surfaced later, in the late 2010s. The Wall

Street Journal reported that the “uncuddly truth about pandas” is that “bears are tough, sexually

potent survivors, not the hapless bunglers we have created as zoo attractions.”79 The author

writes that the male that wins competitions for the female would have sex over 40 times in a

single afternoon, and that “the real panda is a secret stud, with a taste for flesh and a fearsome

bite, at least in its natural habitat.”80 In 2018, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, inspired

by the Wall Street Journal story, stated that pandas are “sex-crazed and aggressive” (Figure 3,

77
Animalogic, “Pandas Are Worse at Sex Than You,” video, series Animal Attractions, written and
produced by Dylan Dubeau, produced by Alex Sopinka, filmed and edited by Andrew Strapp, hosted by
Danielle Dufault, May 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IToO8mlYXzY.
78
Timothy Lavin, “Why I Hate Pandas and You Should Too,” Bloomberg Opinion, August 27,
2013, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2013-08-27/why-i-hate-pandas-and-you-should-too.
79
Lucy Cooke, “The Un-Cuddly Truth about Pandas,” Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2018,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-un-cuddly-truth-about-pandas-1523025742.
80
Cooke, “Un-Cuddly Truth about Pandas.”
 Perret Draft 19

below).81 He said: “You know the official story about pandas—they’re cute, they’re adorably

helpless, which is why they’re almost extinct. But like a lot of what we hear, that’s a lie…

They’re not against sex, either, they just hate unsexy zoos. But when they’re in the wild, male

pandas engage in a fierce sexual contest.”82 A 2021 BBC News story, “The Truth about Giant

Pandas,” reported:

There is a lot of confusion about giant pandas, possibly more than any other species alive.
But to smirk at the diminutive size of the male panda’s winkie, to mock the female panda
for being frigid and to propose the species only has itself to blame for its endangered
status is nothing short of biological ignorance. It turns out that threesome or more-somes
are pretty standard for giant pandas in the wild, an arrangement that would be hard to
replicate in any zoo. In just over three hours, Schaller recorded the large male mating
with Zhen-Zhen at least 48 times, roughly once every three minutes. This is way more
sex than most humans get in a year.83

This quote references the biologist Schaller’s 1985 observations of panda mating in the

wild. The focus on male panda sexual aggression constitutes a reversal of previous media

rhetoric that focused on the lack of sexual desire in pandas. Instead, this portrayal of panda

mating resonates with popular discourse that depicts domesticity and sexual desire as “naturally”

incompatible, such as Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, a self-help book about

fostering a robust sex life in long term relationships.84

81
Jon Levine, “Tucker Carlson Exposes Aggressive Sex-Crazed Pandas: ‘Secret Stud with a Taste
for Flesh’ (Video),” TheWrap, April 10, 2018, https://www.thewrap.com/tucker-carlson-aggressive-sex-
crazed-pandas/.
82
Levine, “Tucker Carlson.”
83
Henry Nicholls, “The Truth about Giant Pandas,” BBC Earth, 2015, Accessed March 22, 2021,
https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150310-the-truth-about-giant-pandas. This source is no longer
available online.
84
Ester Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (New York: Harper Paperbacks,
2017).
 Perret Draft 20

Figure 3: “Pandas are aggressive and sex-crazed,” Fox News 2018

The issue of male aggression in captivity is still an area of considerable disagreement in

the scientific literature. This became clear when claims surrounding the role of male aggression

in panda reproduction resurfaced in 2020, when a PBS nature documentary, titled Pandas: Born

to Be Wild, captured the first footage of pandas breeding in their natural habitat.85 The video

narration describes the aggression and competition between two males who pursue a female and

“hold her hostage” in a tree.86 The film compares and contrasts mating in captivity with that in

the wild, commenting that these differences may explain why it is so difficult for pandas to mate

in captivity. As seen in both the film and popular culture, representations of panda sexualities

draw upon discourses of heteronormativity, such as normative conceptions of men competing for

and pursing women.

Mate Compatibility: Can Pandas Fall in Love?

While researchers initially downplayed the role of mate choice, research in the 2010s

increasingly demonstrated its importance in determining reproductive outcomes. Biologist

Meghan Martin-Windle spearheaded research on mate choice—when both partners show

85
Jacky Poon, prod., Pandas: Born to Be Wild, photog. Yuanqi Wu, documentary, PBS, premiered
October 21, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/preview-pandas-born-be-wild/22896/.
86
Poon, Pandas: Born to Be Wild.
 Perret Draft 21

preference for one another—in pandas. Trained in conservation biology and animal behavior,

Martin-Wintle is a specialist in captive breeding and led research with pandas at the San Diego

Zoo Global’s Institute for Conservation and Research as a postdoctoral fellow.87 She is currently

the director of PDXWildlife, which researches how to improve captive-breeding techniques to

increase reproductive success.88 While at the San Diego Zoo, she led a research collaboration

among scientists at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, the Department of

Biology at Portland State University, and the Bifengxia Chinese Conservation and Research

Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP) in the Sichuan province of China, which provided the

study population.89 These researchers found that mutual mate choice significantly increases the

reproductive success of giant pandas.90 Because pandas paired with preferred partners have

higher copulation and birth rates, the paper contends that “informed behavioral management

could make the difference between success and failure of these programs.”91 Rates of

intromission and cub production are 50% if only one partner is preferred, and 0% if neither is

preferred.92 Intromission success is 80% when both partners are preferred, with a 90% chance of

intromissions producing a cub. As noted by feminist biologists, female mate choice provides an

opportunity for describing the agency of female animals in evolutionary biology.93

In the provocatively titled “Do Opposites Attract? Effects of Personality Matching in

Breeding Pairs of Captive Giant Pandas on Reproductive Success,” Martin-Wintle and

87
Meghan S. Martin-Wintle, interview by author, July 26, 2021.
88
“About PDXWildlife,” PDXWildlife, August 28, 2011, https://www.pdxwildlife.com/about/.
89
Meghan S. Martin-Wintle, interview by author, July 26, 2021.
90
Meghan S. Martin-Wintle et al., “Free Mate Choice Enhances Conservation Breeding in
the Endangered Giant Panda,” Nature Communications 6 (December 2015): 10125.
91
Martin-Wintle et al., “Free Mate Choice,” 10125.
92
Intromission refers to mating that results in penetrative sex.
93
Patricia Gowaty, Feminism and Evolutionary Biology: Boundaries, Intersections, and Frontiers
(Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media, 1997).
 Perret Draft 22

colleagues studied how personality traits impact mate compatibility and offspring production.94

They assessed 23 personality traits (including aggressiveness, exploratory, excitability,

fearfulness, and general activity) using surveys with zookeepers and novel-object tests. They

found “specific combinations of personality traits that resulted in higher intromission or greater

cub production.”95 As they summarize the findings: “Trait dissimilarity (for Excitability and

Food Anticipatory) and trait similarity (for Fearfulness) were associated with better reproductive

outcomes. Excitable males paired with Low-Excitable females had better reproductive outcomes,

and pairs with Low-Fearful males regardless of the female’s Fearfulness performed better.”96

They note that fearfulness is an obstacle to mating, especially for males, and pairs were most

likely to mate when both were low-fearful, which corroborates the findings of an earlier similar

study by Powell and colleagues.97 Martin-Wintle et al. have recommendations of mate

combinations for breeding managers, which includes pairing low-fearful or high-fearful females

with low-fearful males, and to not pairing low-fearful or high-fearful females with high-fearful

males.

Commenting on the debate on male aggression, Martin-Wintle et al. find: “Low-

Aggression females paired with High-Aggression males had higher mating and cub production

than other pairings, especially those where the male was rated low for Aggressiveness.”98 As

they interpret the application of these findings for captive breeding, they write: “Managers often

94
Meghan S. Martin-Wintle et al., “Do Opposites Attract? Effects of Personality Matching in
Breeding Pairs of Captive Giant Pandas on Reproductive Success,” Biological Conservation 207 (March
2017): 27–37.
95
Martin-Wintle et al., “Do Opposites Attract?,” 31.
96
Martin-Wintle et al., “Do Opposites Attract?,” 27.
97
David M. Powell and Joseph T. Svoke, “Novel Environmental Enrichment May Provide a Tool
for Rapid Assessment of Animal Personality: A Case Study with Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda
Melanoleuca),” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 11, no. 4 (2008): 301–18.
98
Martin-Wintle et al., “Do Opposites Attract?,” 33.
 Perret Draft 23

try to minimize aggression during breeding, but these findings point to the need to allow the

expression of at least a certain amount of aggression. In fact, our results suggest that

management strategies may be required to increase aggressiveness in some males whose

aggressiveness scores fall too low on the continuum.”99 They note that aggression is a natural

part of the mating system in wild pandas and thus should not be surprising that it has a favorable

influence on mating success and forms the basis for assortative mating. They recommend pairing

low-aggressive males with high-aggressive females and not low-aggressive females with low-

aggressive males.

Popular-scientific media reported on Martin-Wintle and colleagues’ 2015 findings. A

LiveScience article titled “The key to Making Baby Pandas? Love,” states: “There’s a secret to

making panda babies, and it looks a little bit like love… If ‘love’ is too strong a word for this

preference, it’s safe to say that panda lust, at least, plays a role in reproductive success.”100

Similarly, Traci Watson, in a National Geographic article titled “Pandas Have More Babies If

They Can Pick Their Mates,” writes: “Giant Pandas that are crazy about each other produce more

cubs than panda couples lacking that mysterious spark.”101 The article is illustrated with an

image of a male and female pandas in a playful pose (Figure 4, below). Watson continues, “Even

a one-sided romance has better odds of producing a baby than a mutually indifferent union.” In

describing the pair of pandas at the Smithsonian, she remarks, “Such unsatisfying arranged

marriages are all too common for pandas” because they are lacking in “the amorous arts.”102 To

99
Martin-Wintle et al., “Do Opposites Attract?,” 33.
100
Stephanie Pappas, “The Key to Making Baby Pandas? Love,” Live Science, December 18, 2015,
https://www.livescience.com/53158-key-to-panda-mating.html.
101
Traci Watson, “Pandas Have More Babies If They Can Pick Their Mates,” National
Geographic, December 15, 2015, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/151215-giant-
pandas-animals-science-mating-sex-china.
102
Watson, “Pandas Have More Babies” (no page numbers given).
 Perret Draft 24

characterize the results of Martin-Wintle et al. (2017), Watson relays “females who’d made

whoopee were twice as likely to give birth to cubs if their partner was a love interest rather than

just the boring guy next door.”103 The article quotes Martin-Wintle as saying that panda

attraction is “really complicated”—“Just like in humans.”104

Figure 4: Pandas in love, National Geographic 2015

A Smithsonian Magazine article, “Why Panda Sex Isn’t Black and White,” asks experts,

“Is it true that giant pandas don’t know how to have sex?”105 Martin-Wintle responds: “Imagine

you being told, ‘Hey, this male is genetically not related to you, so you guys would make great

babies. Here, go in a room, have babies, and let us know how that goes.”106 The article continues

that zoos may consider a panda-matching app, and references similar initiatives such as the

“[T]inder for orangutans” experiment in which orangutans were given a touch-screen tablet with

images of different orangutans who were potential mates.

103
Watson, “Pandas Have More Babies” (no page numbers given).
104
Watson, “Pandas Have More Babies” (no page numbers given).
105
Rachel Gross, “Why Panda Sex Isn’t Black and White,” in Pandemonium, special report,
Smithsonian Magazine, February 14, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/only-thing-
harder-finding-love-human-finding-love-panda-180962165/.
106
Gross, “Why Panda Sex Isn’t Black and White.”
 Perret Draft 25

The popular-scientific articles involve anthropomorphism that portrays panda mating

behaviors in relation to human romance and sex. Although mostly absent from her scientific

writing, Martin-Wintle reinforces the anthropocentrism through her quotes featured in National

Geographic107 and Smithsonian Magazine108 that compare panda mate preference to attraction in

humans. The articles described in this section are also an example of how gender and sexual

norms can travel across the human-animal binary. The title of Martin-Wintle et al.’s scientific

article “Do Opposites Attract?” reflects heterosexual framings of women and men as “opposite

sexes.” It references the scientific doctrine of sexual complementarity, which holds that male and

female sexualities are polar opposites that complement one another and are determined by

biology.109 The popular-science articles deploy heteronormative framings of sexual relationships,

such as describing babies as the goal of sex and invoking heterosexual romantic tropes like “the

guy next door.” Descriptions of introductions of captive pandas for mating as “arranged

marriages” draw upon orientalist characterizations of Chinese arranged marriages as an exotic

“other” that constitutes the opposite of normative Western family structures.110 This also

resonates with what Cynthia Chris, a scholar of media studies, describes as racialized depictions

of panda sexualities in wildlife documentaries about captive-breeding facilities in China.111

Rhetoric surrounding genetics and compatibility in captive breeding programs may also

reference anxieties surrounding racial purity and miscegenation.112

107
Watson, “Pandas Have More Babies” (no page numbers given).
108
Gross, “Why Panda Sex Isn’t Black and White.”
109
Cynthia Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, rev. ed.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
110
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
111
Chris, Watching Wildlife.
112
Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid: And Other Figments of the Classifying
Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
 Perret Draft 26

In 2018, National Geographic produced a documentary, The Life of Rare Pandas, that

showed the inner workings of the Wolong captive-breeding program.113 As I show in the

following analysis, wildlife documentary films often encode and reinforce historically contingent

understandings of gender and sexuality. These findings confirm work done by feminist scholars

in the field of animal studies. For example, Cynthia Chris argues that the preoccupation with

mating in wildlife documentaries on popular channels such as National Geographic and Animal

Planet reflects normalized and naturalized conceptions of heterosexual reproduction.114

Similarly, Greg Mitman details how wildlife films reflect and reinforce ideals of nuclear family,

domesticity, and solidified gender roles within a family.115 As seen in The Rare Life of Pandas,

documentaries about panda mating not only portray the expectations placed upon pandas in

captive-breeding programs but also act as a mirror of historically contingent understandings of

human heterosexual romance and sex.116

The Life of Rare Pandas depicts the process of matching pandas for breeding, featuring

footage of mating introductions as well as interviews with Li Desheng, the director of the center,

and zoo keepers. The documentary tells us that “only one in ten male pandas can mate naturally”

and that “the three males [in the captive-breeding program] are expected to service all of the

breeding females.”117 National Geographic films Fe-Fe, whose name means “concubine,” as she

rubs her genitals and bleats, a sound used to communicate to males that she is in estrous. The

documentary’s framing of Fe-Fe’s name as “concubine” is an orientalist reference to the practice

113
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda, National Geographic, February 3, 2018, documentary shared
on YouTube, 47:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYp_Shk7XcI.
114
Chris, Watching Wildlife.
115
Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film, Weyerhaeuser
Environmental Classics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009).
116
Said, Orientalism.
117
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
 Perret Draft 27

of men keeping mistresses in China until the twentieth-century.118 In restating a mating

encounter between Fe-Fe and one of the males, the documentary narrates: “[T]he couple has to

be formally introduced before they take things any further,” and when they finally are

introduced, the male “is too focused on his stomach.”119 Fe-Fe is instead artificially inseminated.

The film narrates that the “pressure is on for the male pandas to perform.”120

The video shows the efforts to get female panda Lu Lu to mate with male panda Me Jing.

Me Jing is aggressive toward Lu Lu, but the keepers do not separate the animals. Li Desheng at

the Wolong captive-breeding program explains that males in the wild fight before mating, so

“they don’t have any energy to beat up the female.”121 He continues that males in captivity have

a lot of energy to “beat up the female,” which causes such injuries as “cut ears or even lost limbs

but never death.”122 The two pandas mate and Lu Lu is released from the cage. She runs and

climbs to the top of another cage. The narrator comments that she is “clearly terrified” but has no

serious injuries.123 In Decolonizing Extinction, Parreñas explores sexual violence against

endangered female orangutans that occurs at captive-breeding programs and that conservation

biologists describe as “natural” and “inevitable.”124 She highlights how a human-controlled

environment changes orangutan social behavior and thus creates more violence against females.

The documentary reinforces the naturalness of male aggression through portraying Me Jing’s

behavior as part of panda male sexuality that would be expressed (albeit differently) in the wild.

118
Said, Orientalism.
119
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
120
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
121
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
122
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
123
Nat Geo Wild, Life of Rare Panda.
124
Parreñas, Decolonizing Extinction.
 Perret Draft 28

In the second breeding season, male panda Wu Gang does not show interest in the female

pandas, and, as the narrator describes, “at one point the roles even reversed,” which references

normative gender roles and positions during sex.125 The documentary narrates: “Lovesick Lu Lu

has to show Wu Gang how it’s done.”126 When introduced to a female panda, “Instead of … his

usual aggressive way, they play” and “both behave like mating is a big game.”127 The footage

shows that Wu Gang interacts with the female with playfulness and without aggression and

violence. The documentary portrays the success of the mating behavior in terms of match-

making and heterosexual romance.

Feminist scholars in the field of animal studies have documented how representations of

animals are often anthropomorphized and gendered in ways that reinforce normative ideas of

sexuality and reproduction.128 For example, in Primate Visions, Donna Haraway argues that

representations of primate sexualities and reproduction reify the naturalness and primacy of

heterosexuality and the nuclear family in human social relations.129 In the case of representations

of panda mating, popular science and documentaries reinforce the naturalness and inevitability of

heterosexuality, gender roles, and the gender/sex binary.

Conclusion

Biodiversity discourse depicts endangered species in zoos through reference to discourses

of an imperiled future for masculinity and heterosexuality. As I’ve argued in previous chapters,

cultural anxieties about the future of human gender and sexuality permeates biodiversity

125
Parreñas, Decolonizing Extinction.
126
Parreñas, Decolonizing Extinction.
127
Parreñas, Decolonizing Extinction.
128
Parreñas, Gender: Animals.
129
Haraway, Primate Visions.
 Perret Draft 29

discourse. In this chapter, I demonstrate that biodiversity discourse frames “natural” and

“normal” masculinity and heterosexuality as threatened by the conditions of captivity in captive

breeding. More specifically, most scientific and popular discourse on panda reproduction in

captivity between 1985 and 2015 focuses on abnormalities in male reproductive behavior. These

depictions often portray male pandas as emasculated, sexually deficient, and lacking supposed

aggressiveness found in the wild. These findings extend insights from previous chapters that

illuminate a variety of ways in which biodiversity discourse portrays masculinity and

heterosexuality in crisis. After a series of scientific journal articles in 2015 and 2017, there was a

shift in scientific research to concentrate on mate compatibility in panda captive-breeding

programs. Popular-science depictions of mate choice in such programs explained the importance

of mate compatibility with reference to heteronormative tropes, such as the idea that “opposites

attract.”

Although gendered rhetoric used to describe panda reproduction changed over the course

of the history of panda captive-breeding, both scientific and popular-science representations of

panda reproduction persistently describe the behavior of captive pandas through reference to

normalized and naturalized human sexual stereotypes and tropes. These stereotypes include

female sexual passivity, male aggression, and gender roles in heterosexual sex. Biodiversity

discourse also draws upon tropes of heteronormative romance, such as narrative framings of men

courting women. These findings corroborate existing feminist scholarship on the role of

discourses of gender and sexual normativity in how scientists and the media describe the

reproduction of animals.130

130
Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism
and Technoscience; Erika Lorraine Milam, Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in
Evolutionary Biology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the
Body; Franklin, Dolly Mixtures.
 Perret Draft 30

During early years of captive breeding, there was debate regarding whether the problems

with panda reproduction were due to the conditions of captivity or something intrinsic to panda

reproductive biology. Later, when captive-breeding programs focused on mate compatibility,

decisions on managing captive panda populations were made in reference to what scientists

described as natural aggression in the mating system of wild pandas. Yet, behavior that is

considered natural is not self-evident, as environmental scholars have described how

constructions of “wild” and “natural” depend upon culturally mediated understandings of the

relationship between humans and our environment.131

In the 1980s, few pandas could reproduce in captivity. By the 2000s, captive-breeding

programs created self-sustaining captive populations through the use of artificial reproductive

technologies, twin-swapping protocols, and, in the 2010s, the application of knowledge about

mate choice. As the result of these successes, in 2016 the IUCN downgraded the giant panda’s

survival level from “endangered” to “vulnerable,” but the panda is still considered endangered by

the Chinese government.132 In describing the future of the management of pandas in captive-

breeding programs, Martin-Wintle recommends “[e]nrichment and well-being in addition to

increased chemical and acoustic communication between pandas.”133 Martin-Wintle also points

to the need for more research on panda pregnancies, male competition, and panda social systems

in order to improve captive-breeding programs.134

131
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,”
Environmental History 1, no. 1 (1996): 7–28.
132
This change in status indicates a lower extinction risk; Ron Swaisgood, D. Wang, and F. Wei,
Ailuropoda melanoleuca (errata version pub’d 2017); the giant panda was most recently assessed April
11, 2016, for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, e.T712A121745669,
2016, https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-2.RLTS.T712A45033386.en.
133
Holt, Brown, and Comizzoli, Reproductive Sciences in Animal Conservation.
134
Holt, Brown, and Comizzoli, Reproductive Sciences in Animal Conservation.
 Perret Draft 31

The pair of pandas at the San Diego Zoo returned to China in April 2019 after a two-

decade loan and research collaboration.135 In 2020, following the closure of zoos to the public as

the result of the coronavirus pandemic, a pair of pandas at the Hong Kong Zoo mated for the first

time in ten years, which has raised questions regarding how the stress of captivity may impact

their ability to reproduce.136 While environmentalists consider the development of panda captive-

breeding programs to be a major success, questions still exist regarding whether captive breeding

benefits wild populations—given that initiatives to release pandas back into their habitat have

resulted in the death of those pandas.137

Endangered species function symbolically in cultural concerns surrounding our shared

environmental futures. Environmental historians have shown that the management of the

reproduction of zoo animals depends upon historically and culturally specific understandings of

our relationship with nature.138 In Cloning Wild Life, Carrie Friese argues that captive breeding

and techno-scientific management of zoo animal populations is a means of “reproducing nature

into the future.”139 Management of captive endangered species such as giant pandas could be

interpreted as a means through which humans grapple with the future of reproduction, including

our own sexualities.

135
Anica Colbert and Ebone Monet, “San Diego Zoo Giant Pandas Moving to China,” KPBS
evening edition, April 2, 2019, https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/apr/02/san-diegans-have-only-weeks-
left-see-giant-pandas-/.
136
Amanda Hess, “The Rise of the Coronavirus Nature Genre,” New York Times, April 17, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/arts/coronavirus-nature-genre.html.
137
James Owen, “First Panda Freed into Wild Found Dead,” National Geographic, May 31, 2007,
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/china-freed-panda-death-animals.
138
Hanson, Animal Attractions.
139
Friese, Cloning Wild Life, 7; emphasis in original.