Too Much Bamboo Is Bad for Panda Sex, New Study Says

Pandas are super relatable. Their whole lives are about constantly eating food, lying down, and being too lazy to prevent themselves from dying.

Despite decades of conservation efforts, giant pandas—whose Cantonese moniker literally translates to "big bear cat"—will not mate to save their lives, and when they do, panda pregnancies are rare. Scientists have become so desperate to get these guys to fuck and have babies that in the past they have resorted to giving pandas Viagra and showing them porn. But new research suggests that reassessing what the animal eats could be the key to boosting the panda population.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that bamboo, which the bears eat in excess in captivity, might contribute to severe gastrointestinal distress in pandas, which can affect the animals' efforts to become pregnant.

Based on the documented patterns of two pandas at the Memphis Zoo, Ya Ya (female) and Le Le (male), dating back to 2003, the research team noticed seasonal shifts in the eating behavior of pandas. In winter and spring, the pandas mostly ate the bamboo stalks. By summer, however, 59 percent of their diet consisted of bamboo leaves. This switch, the researchers found, was out of necessity. "We hypothesize that because the stalk upsets their stomach, the pandas have to switch over to exclusively eating leaves," says Garrett Suen, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of bacteriology and co-author of the study. "The stalk portion of the bamboo is really rough. We think that as pandas are digesting it, the rough edges are scraping along the gastrointestinal tract and it's causing an inflammatory response."

This causes a complete shedding of the gastrointestinal lining, which comes out in the panda's poop as mucoids. This is a very upsetting process for the pandas. When pandas pass mucoids, the researchers observed, they become lethargic, appear to be in pain, and stop eating. Unfortunately, this is also happens to occur right after breeding season, when most female pandas become pregnant.

The researchers say that this stomach crisis can impact those budding panda fetuses in the womb and even prevent successful reproduction in the first place, as pandas have up to three months of delayed implantation after sex."If you're not eating and you're carry a panda fetus with a lot of energy demands, that does not bode well for the fetus," Suen explains. "If you're trying to become pregnant, that doesn't bode well either."

Pandas in the wild have access to a wide array of vegetation and types of bamboo, and the study suggests that the restrictions of feeding in captivity could be making zoo pandas very sick. Suen says that it's important to preempt this occurrence and consider changing pandas' diet during mating season. "A solution could be to feed pandas less of the bamboo stalk and more of the leaf, which presumably would not be [so] abrasive. From our perspective, the diet is something to strongly consider for reproductive success."