Secret sex lives of pandas revealed!

Shanghaiist may be accused of going with the flow on occasions, and one of those areas might be to do with our narrow mindset on the lovely, cute and adorable panda. We've applied our finest available powers of research to bring you the following snippets on the flipside of China's panda tail, and yes, it is mucky in there. So let us be accused of panda-ring no more. Yes, this is reporting with bite.

The period of March to April is usually where pandas come into heat. However, due to an unusually warm winter this year, it appears spring has already sprung for pandas in China.

The Times recently reported on Niu Niu, a wild panda rescued after taking a beating from three other pandas. Due to her injuries, Niu Niu lost her front left paw, and now faces an uncertain future. CNN has video footage of Niu Niu trying to get around her enclosure. However, panda-centric ingenuity has been called for, and the obvious answer is get a wild animal fitted with a prosthetic paw.

Niu Niu has difficulty feeding herself because pandas need both paws to grasp the bamboo, and she requires constant help.

But that is not the only shortcoming that confronts a three-pawed panda. Her loss of balance has severely affected her love life. Without her fourth paw she cannot stand up — and that means that she is unable to mate. So staff at the rescue centre in Shaanxi province, northwest China, came up with the idea of fitting her with a prosthetic limb.

They have approached local suppliers of artificial limbs for humans to help to solve Niu Niu’s problem and are eager for advice from international experts. Ning Feng, a reporter for a local newspaper who visited Niu Niu, told The Times: “The factories have sent employees over to look at the panda. But before making any decision they need to do more research. We hope that someone in Britain may be able to help.”

Ah, yes, the UK. Well known for their work in prosthetic limbs for wild beasts.

Let's hope that once Niu Niu gets her mojo back, she doesn't run into some of the problems of her kin when it comes to, uh, self-expression.

...the long bamboo pole being wielded from above giving this female panda Huamei the odd whack. (you can hear her making a mewling sound of displeasure) This was to correct her "bad habits" I was told. Firstly she likes to play with the water in the little rock pool you can see her heading towards. And her other bad habit? "Oh, masturbation." Right. anything to avoid procreative sex apparently.

Time Magazine's China Blog has some shaky & swivelling footage of the action (download link here). But Shanghaiist thought, getting spanked whilst self-servicing? Some may think that these aren't mewling sounds of displeasure. Kinky pandas.

Simon Elegant went on to describe how the panda, Huamei further attempts at getting some satisfaction went down when she set her eyes on her intended...

Anyway, she was in heat (oestrus for the technically minded) and thus had a male panda on either side in separate cages in the hope they might hit it off. After a while, she finally decided that maybe males weren't so bad after all and lifted her tail and backed slowly to the wire mesh fence that separated her from her male neighbor Wugong. He took one look at her apparently-not-so-inviting hindquarters and headed straight to the bamboo clump in his cage for a good feed. oh, well, back to the lab for you, Huamei.

Huamei, single and sexually repressed. We blame The Man.

We also learnt that another female panda's attempt for sexual liberation was snatched by 'keepers' at the Chengdu Breeding Centre:

Last month, four-year-old Yashuang became the first panda to escape Chengdu's famous breeding base through a gap in the wall. Keepers say she was in in search of a mate, but Shanghaiist feels that she saw the light and her chance to escape the shenanigans at panda research stations around China as described here.

Zeng Zhixiang, a researcher at the centre, said: “We’ll fix up the wall and install an electric pulse network outside the panda villa to prevent them from climbing out.”

This is repression of panda sexual freedom if we've ever heard it.

Who would have believed it, but thanks to nanheyangrouchuan for a tip. Image taken from Bordom.Net.