Were my Grandpa alive...

(Who, if you'da ever had the pleasure, would've reminded you whole a lot of this guy)

...I have to believe he would read this and say, "Well don't that just beat all?"

From here:

Porn for pandas

By Jonathan Brown

There's an unmistakable sexual tension at W-long's celebrated giant panda enclosures on the misty upper slopes of Sichuan's bamboo forests.

Early summer provides an all-too-narrow window of opportunity for the handful of male breeding pandas in the world-famous reserve, and the prospect of imminent gratification hangs seductively in the air.

Qing Qing, Ying Ying and friends are waiting bad-temperedly - or as grumpily as this disarmingly docile creature gets in captivity - to begin the job at hand. The males must endure a frustrating wait until the moment is exactly right for their more reluctant and choosy breeding partners. As the females prepare to come into their brief period of oestrus, the males are barking and swinging from the branches in anticipation.

But if the male pandas's hopes are riding high on the activities of the next few days, so too are those of the scientists who have dedicated their lives to the preservation of China's giant panda, and who shoulder responsibility for the future success of this great symbol of global conservation.

At Wolong, a four-hour drive along a treacherous single-lane road from the provincial capital of Chengdu, they, with the help of the international community and the support of hundreds of panda lovers around the world, are painstakingly rebuilding the critically low population.

In 2006, 34 cubs were born in captivity in China, setting a record for the 30-year-old breeding programme. In 2007, expectations are high that this number can be bettered.

According to Prof Tang Chunxiang, the chief vet at the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda at Wolong, "Panda breeding here is successful and we have worked hard to overcome the many problems."

Every avenue has been explored, from IVF to showing prospective couples "pornographic" videos of pandas mating in the wild.

Tang believes that without such forthright human intervention, the panda would now be extinct.
...

Which proves one of my pet theories yet again.

That no matter how noble their motives or plentiful their degrees, China Giant Panda Conservation and Research-ologists don't know the first thing about what reels in the


the sweet, sweet ladies.