TOYS may improve the sex lives of pandas, say researchers in China who have
introduced playthings into the animals’ pens.
Many male pandas raised in captivity spend hours a day engaged in repetitive
behaviours called stereotypies. They might pirouette around the enclosure or
suck a paw for 20 minutes or more. Such males show little interest in females,
and sometimes carry on twirling or sucking even when a female in oestrus is just
metres away.
Ronald Swaisgood, a behavioural biologist working at the Wolong Breeding
Center in the Sichuan province of China, put toys such as stuffed burlap sacks,
plastic…
