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Gender mix-up with pandas coming to Toronto

Posted By: Michelle Rosa · 12/7/2012 5:47:00 AM

Next Spring, the Toronto Zoo will receive two pandas from China for a breeding program. There's just one problem, they are both female.

The good news is, Chinese officials were aware of that possibility so they took blood samples of the pair last month.

One of the females will be swapped out for an "age-appropriate" male panda selected by the Chinese government.

Dr. William Rapley, the zoo's executive director of conservation, education and wildlife says, it's easy to mistaken the gender of pandas when they're young, mainly because the body parts used to identify the gender, aren't very large at that point. Both the male and female genitalia are pretty similar in size.

The pandas will stay at the Toronto Zoo for five years, then they will be moved to the Calgary Zoo for another five years.

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  1. Jack posted on 12/07/2012 12:27 PM
    Am I the only one who's starting to get the impression that the pandas just don't care anymore about the continuation of their species? It's just starting to feel like we're pouring a lot of resources into interfering in an otherwise natural occurrence of a species going extinct.
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