Hong Kong panda mating sparks new hopes for Wang Wang and Fu Ni

A mid-lockdown breakthrough in the difficult art of panda breeding in Hong Kong has sparked new hopes for Adelaide’s not-so-loved-up pair.

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Zoos SA staff are monitoring a pair of frisky pandas in Hong Kong with hopes isolation may have the same effect on Adelaide’s Wang Wang and Fu Ni.

News that a pair of 14-year-old pandas in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park have mated for the first time in more than 10 years, after getting some privacy due to the coronavirus, has caught the attention of Zoos SA staff. However, there is one catch – the breeding season in the southern hemisphere is still six months away.

Fu Ni. Picture: Adrian Mann

The zoo’s director of life sciences, Phil Ainsley told the Sunday Mail, said he was buoyed by the actions of Ying Ying and Le Le, who, like Adelaide’s Wang Wang and Fu Ni have also have a history of not getting it on.

“We are really encouraged by the news coming out of Ocean Park,” Dr Ainsley told the Sunday Mail. “It is a fantastic outcome for the team up there. “They have just come through their breeding time making it a perfect time with the closure for those guys.

“For us we know that our breeding season is still six months away so it is a bit of an unknown as to whether we will still be in shut down or whether we would’ve overcome the pandemic.

“If we are still in the period where the zoo is closed it would be a much different opportunity to what we normally see when we are open to the public.”

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Wang Wang, 14, and Fu Ni, 13, were at serious risk of being sent back to China, due to their inability to breed, before they became a Federal Election issue and a five-year extension being granted late last year.

The next five years are considered critical to producing panda offspring, which the zoo would keep for two years before sending to China, because Wang Wang and Fu Ni are entering peak mating maturity.