Giant Panda--Chapultepec Zoo, Mexico City 1999

Sometimes, I don't think it has anything to do with scientist's, Drs., reproductive specialists, letters behind your name, and least of all magic. I think it has nothing more to do with anything but paying attention, and noting small details or "sweating the small stuff." From Wikipedia, here is Mexico City's Panda production record. I don't know if it is correct or recent, and please correct it if it is not:

• Pe Pe and Ying Ying were a mated pair of Giant Pandas donated to the Zoo by the Chinese government in September 1975. They both died in 1989.
• Xengli was born on August 1980, but died after just 9 days.
• Tohui was born on July 21, 1981. She became a 'star', even having his own song, 'El Pequeño Panda de Chapultepec' (The Little Panda from Chapultepec) performed by Mexican singer Yuri.
• Liang Liang was born 22 June 1983.
• Xiu Hua was born in the Zoo on 25 June 1985; her parents were Ying Ying (mother) and Pe Pe (father).
• Shuan Shuan was born in the Zoo on 15 June 1987. She is a sibling to Xiu Hua.
• Xin Xin ("hope" in Chinese) was conceived via artificial insemination and was born in the Zoo on 1 July 1990. Her mother is Tohui (she died 16 November 1993) and her father is Chia Chia from the London Zoo.

Six births from 1980 to 1999. How many after 2000? The reason I ask, and this is adressing "sweating the small stuff", you will note that the Panda Playground in Mexico City was painted red(above and below,) up until 2000, when it was re painted the more environmentally natural, zoo going public, appealing green(see the last thread.) I'm just saying(with tongue in cheek).........


MEXICO CITY HAS MAGIC TOUCH FOR PANDAS
Reuters Nov. 4, 1990

Against all apparent odds, Mexico City's Chapultepec Zoo boasts the most successful, and natural, panda-breeding program outside China. And no one, not even the zoo's proud director, can seem to figure out why.

Far removed from the rarified atmosphere of their native habitat in China, caged up in the smog-choked heart of a city so polluted that birds have been known to fall dead from trees, the plucky pandas are thriving.

Eight pandas have been conceived naturally, without any human help, at the zoo since its original "husband and wife" team, Pe-Pe and Ying-Ying, arrived here in 1975. The number of natural panda births is unmatched anywhere outside China.

Although the bears' black-ringed eyes may give them the appearance of someone chronically affected by the high levels of pollutants that plague Mexico City, zoo director Marielena Hoyo says the pandas appear unfazed by it and are actually happy.

It certainly hasn't affected their sex drive, she said.

Hoyo spoke at her zoo office, which is cluttered with the stuffed remains of several animals, including a baby hippopotamus, a camel, a South American sloth and a diminutive giraffe.

But distinguishing the office from a stuffed animal emporium were three of Chapultepec's baby pandas who died soon after birth. Hoyo keeps their tiny bodies, each weighing about four ounces, in jars on a shelf in her office.

One was crushed when its mother, weighing about 260 pounds, took an unfortunate turn in her sleep. The others, twins by separate mothers, were rejected in favor of their brothers or sisters.

The interview was interrupted by occasional squawks from Sydney, Hoyo's Australian cockatoo, and by her own raucous laughter.

There are various theories about the success of the Chapultepec panda program. One centers on Mexico City's 7,300-foot altitude, similar to that of the bears' native habitat in Szechuan, China.

But Hoyo described most of the theories as hogwash, preferring instead to talk about magic.

"There must be something magical here. . . . There's something about this place," she said.

A gorilla who never mated during 20 years in a zoo outside Mexico began to do so twice daily soon after his arrival in Chapultepec, Hoyo said.

"If that isn't magical, what is?" she asked with the delight of a mother who just found the right wife for her aging son.

Four of the six pandas now living at Chapultepec are the offspring of Pe-Pe and Ying-Ying, the two original pandas who died within six months of each other in 1988 at the age of 14.

On July 1, one of the couple's daughters, Tohui, gave birth to the only panda born outside China by a mother who was herself born in captivity.

The father of the cub, whom Hoyo affectionately refers to as her "Englishman," is on loan from Regent's Park Zoo in London.

The cub is healthy and expected to start walking soon.