They pawed each other, mewed and rolled around, but, despite all their gentle teasing, when it came to the crucial moment Edinburgh Zoo’s pandas just weren’t in the mood.
Tian Tian, or Sweetie, and Yang Guang, or Sunshine, were attracted to each other and keen to mate, according to their keepers who have been encouraging physical contact between the animals.
However, it seems that their inexperience was holding them back and they shied away at the last moment. As female pandas are only in season for 36 hours a year, it will be 12 months before there is another chance of the animals breeding.
Iain Valentine, director of research and conservation at the zoo, said they displayed a “huge amount of eagerness and attraction”, adding: “There was lots of vocalisation and encouragement from our female and physical contact between the two.
“He mounted her several times, however, full mating did not occur. Although both have bred before and have borne cubs with other pandas, they are both still relatively inexperienced.
“At the end of the day, this is year one of a 10-year conservation project here at Edinburgh Zoo. We are hugely encouraged by how much the natural sparks flew between the two animals, as like humans, not all male and female pandas are attracted to each other. Both were keen to mate, but their inexperience showed.”
Darren McGarry, head of animals at the zoo, said: “We certainly had the foreplay, we just didn’t get them on to the next stage.”
Tian Tian and Yang Guang were repeatedly put together in the “love tunnel” between their enclosures for around five minutes at a time, and separated when the female showed signs of becoming “fed up”.
Both pandas slept between the conjugal visits as if to forget the whole embarrassing affair.
The animals, who are on loan from China at an annual cost of £625,000 for the next 10 years, met five times on Tuesday after experts said the Tian Tian was in season, and several times again yesterday without success.
It is now a case of waiting until next year, when keepers may consider artificial insemination for Tian Tian. Mr Valentine insisted the failure to mate was not a complete loss, describing the events of the past two days as a “fantastic trial run”.
Both have produced cubs before, but not with each other, and the zoo had been hoping for Tian Tian’s second set of twins. The arrival of cubs later this year would have been a huge boost to Edinburgh Zoo where visitor numbers have increased 200 per cent since the pandas were flown in from China in December.
Any cubs produced by the pair would belong to China, but would stay with their mother for the first two-and-a-half years, as they would in the wild. No pandas have been successfully bred in captivity in their first year in a zoo.
There are thought to be around 1,600 of the endangered animals left in the wild, and just over 300 in captivity around the world.