Pandas are not good at reproducing, especially when kept in captivity. Now their droppings could help scientists understand why.
A lot of animals have difficulty mating in captivity. Cheetahs, polar bears, some leopards and giant pandas all have trouble reproduce.
Pandas, however, have a particularly difficult life.
Females only ovulate once a year in the spring and have a short 40-hour window during which they are fertile.
If they become pregnant, they usually give birth to two young, but only one usually survives and then stays with its mother for up to three years.
In captivity, pandas are also stressed by being stuck in confined spaces and males do not seem to appreciate the lack of choice in mates.
When conservationists try to help by artificially inseminating females, the mothers demonstrate less maternal behavior than if they had conceived naturally.
All of this means that conservation efforts to save pandas are particularly difficult. A team of scientists from Beijing suspects that the diet of pandas in captivity isn’t helping.
“In captivity, animals do not have the freedom to choose their optimal food,” the Beijing Normal University team said in their new study. This means they may lack “essential for reproduction” nutrients.
Bamboo makes up the majority of their diet, but they are missing a gene that would help them digest it. This means they need to eat between 12 and 38 kilograms of bamboo every day to get enough nutrients, and they rely on their gut bacteria to break them down.
Now, studying 72 scat samples from 20 male giant pandas, scientists found that the males who had successfully bred had “significantly higher” levels of a gut bacteria called “clostridium.” The Beijing team believes this could impact their fertility.
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In order to increase levels of this bacteria, they recommended that zookeepers and conservationists feed their pandas a more “wild” diet by increasing the amount of shoots and flavonoids consumed by the pandas.
Panda conservation has seen recent successes despite breeding problems. The species was recently downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” after its population increased by 17% in a decade.
There are now 1,864 living in the wild, thanks to efforts by the Chinese government, conservationists and scientists to protect their habitats and bring the species back from the brink.
