Inside the persistent myth that giant pandas are bad at sex
Popular Science ·
The post Inside the persistent myth that giant pandas are bad at sex appeared first on Popular Science .
Excerpted from INTHE COMPANY OF PANDAS: My Life with the World’s Favorite Bear by Dr. Brandie Smith. Copyright 2026 © by Dr. Brandie Smith. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
WHEN YOU take care of pandas, your primary responsibility is to make more pandas. I was told point-blank during my interviews to become curator, “Your job is to get the panda pregnant.” I had a PhD in population genetics, and while I’d picked up considerable experience with endangered-species reproduction at the theoretical level, my hands-on experience was limited. But nothing helps you adapt quickly to a new job like being asked to help the world’s most famous bear survive as a species.
When I arrived at the National Zoo, it had been almost three years since the birth of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian’s first cub, Tai Shan. There are usually two years between births, so the mood at the zoo was not worried, but determined. I was added to the weekly panda meeting, which included the curator, keepers, veterinarians, scientists, and even the zoo’s director—at the time I started it was John Berry, but segued to Dennis Kelly in 2010—as we pored over every detail of the breeding and birthing plans, making micro adjustments, to ensure not just a successful fertilization, but that Mei Xiang had everything an expectant panda mother needed to be happy. It was as if we could group-project a healthy cub into existence. And although I understood the intense desire to see a panda cub, I quickly learned the interest focuses not just on the offspring, but includes the reproductive act itself. And that level of detailed attention was not just for the panda professionals, but for the hobbyists as well. I think of pandas as being more adorable than alluring, but for some reason, a great many people are obsessed with their sex lives.
In 1972, when President Nixon contacted The Washington Star to share the news that Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing would be coming to the capital, he told the reporter, “The problem, however, with pandas is that they don’t know how to mate.” Director Ted Reed was aware of the “sex problem” and determined to get ahead of it. As part of the preparations for the pandas’ arrival, even though the pair were still too young to breed, he hired the zoo’s first female scientist, Devra Kleiman, as a reproductive zoologist. Over the years, he wrote frequently to Smithsonian Secretary S.Dillon Ripley about the zoo’s efforts to breed the animals and wryly acknowledged his unusual fixation. Reed saw the yearslong failure not just as his own (especially after optimistically promising baby pandas for the bicentennial year in 1976) but even more generally as a “defeat for machismo; an utter humiliation for all zoo males.” That these two very dignified men were sending letters back and forth in which the director referred to himself as the Smithsonian’s “resident sex maniac,” and, later, how he regretted that “the great panda sex orgy of 1979” had not materialized, was not at all inappropriate.
Talking about sex is necessary for the people responsible for breeding endangered species, especially when you’re talking about the important work of making more pandas. When it comes to pandas, it seems that everyone’s inhibitions fall away. Other species don’t get that pass. At the zoo, we see parents’ natural modesty kick in as they describe an elephant’s erection as an extra tail or leg, or they rush their children past a pair of amorous orangutans that are “just playing.” But when it comes to pandas, even if the animals are in the midst of attempting the act, a wide swath of the public, including families, will line up to watch and cheer them on.
Maybe it’s because they’re so cute that they seem more pure than prurient. I think most of our preoccupation with the sex lives of giant pandas derives from the urban legend that, when it comes to the basics of reproduction, these bears are completely clueless. This is demonstrably false because modern pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleuca , and their precursors have been on the planet for millions of years. In the wild, the panda lifespan is roughly fifteen to twenty years, so if you do the math, you can see that it took a lot of successful panda procreation to carry the species into the twenty-first century. So, where did this idea originate? And why does it persist?
In the Company of Pandas: Exploring the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Bear by Dr. Brandie Smith is available wherever books are sold on November 10.
About the Author
Dr. Brandie Smith is the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. With decades of experience in animal care, conservation, and zoo management, she has overseen critical breeding programs for endangered species and has personally witnessed some of the most dramatic moments in panda conservation history at one of America’s premier zoos. Originally from Indiana, Pennsylvania, she grew up around animals and began her professional career as an intern at the Pittsburgh Zoo and the National Zoo.
The post Inside the persistent myth that giant pandas are bad at sex appeared first on Popular Science .