Mexican Zoo Plans to Borrow Giant Panda from China
 Xinhuanet
| | A giant panda named 'Bass' eats cake with a fork during its 25th birthday celebration in Fuzhou in China's Fujian province. Bass weighs 140 kg (309 pounds). (China Newsphoto) |
Mexico City - Mexico City's Chapultepec Zoo is trying to borrow a male giant panda from China and breed him with three females, reported Fernando Gual Sill, general director of Mexico City's public zoos.
Chapultepec Zoo, the largest in Mexico and the only one in Latin America to have pandas, places a high priority on the rare species, Gual said.
Mexico has made arrangements with China through diplomatic channels to get a male panda under the "reproductive lending" formula, he added.
Mexico first owned pandas on Sept. 10, 1975, when China donated the country a pair of pandas named Bei Bei and Ying Ying. The couple became the most prolific pair outside China by having seven offspring.
Mexico now has three female pandas: Xiu Hua, 20 years old, XuanXuan, 18, and Xin Xin, 15. There are only 160 of pandas in captivity worldwide, and in China, the birthplace of the animals, there are only around 1,600 living in the wild.
Gual said the Mexican female pandas failed to get pregnant despite several artificial fertilization treatments and three visits -- in 2001, 2002 and 2003 -- by the Japanese male panda Ling Ling. The zoo then sent Xuan Xuan to Tokyo for another try with Ling Ling, but the two pandas still failed to reproduce.
The zoo wants to work with China to give its captive breeding program a push, hoping to send China a Mexican-born panda one day,Gual said.
If given an official permit, Chinese experts would visit Mexicoto learn about the three females, said Gual, who is the manager of the city's three public zoos.
He said the pandas represented a symbol of brotherhood between China and Mexico. |
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News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
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