Another Genius Panda Fakes Pregnancy For Extra Food, Air Conditioning

A giant panda faked being pregnant in order to get special treatment from her carers, zoo experts claim.

Yuan Yuan gave birth to her first and only cub in July of 2013, drawing many visitors since.

According to a report in Huffington Post, pregnant pandas are moved to into ” single rooms with air conditioning” and are fed more fruits and bamboo and provided “round the clock care”.

Eleven-year-old Yuan Yuan was thought to have been expecting a second cub after breeders artificially inseminated her in March. “Possibly. But it’s more likely that something else is going on here”, he wrote, pointing to the prevalence of what scientists call “phantom pregnancies” in pandas.

She had been showing symptoms including loss of appetite, thickening of the uterus, and increased fecal progesterone concentration since early June.

However, when experts from the Chinese mainland visited the panda, they determined through an ultrasound that she was not pregnant and that the signs of her pregnancy are already returning to normal.

In 2014, CNN reported that a panda, Ai Hin, at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, might have been “faking it” to improve her quality of life.

Suzanne Hall, a giant panda senior research technician at The San Diego Zoo, wrote about the pregnancy problems of pandas in 2011, long before the world had accused Ai Hin or Yuan Yuan of living lies.

Researchers believe Yuan Yuan, after observing the change in treatment, may have displayed behavior similar to that exhibited during pregnancy so that she could live in air-conditioned luxury during the scorching summer months.

Their names create the phrase “tuan yuan” in Chinese, which means “reunion”.

While numerous more than 300 pandas in zoos and breeding centers remain in China, they can also be found around the world.