Would you believe Viagra as the means to save the Chinese giant panda from extinction? Scientists here just might, since they're reportedly experimenting with Viagra after traditional Chinese medicine failed to lift the pandas' libidoes. The coy bears often frustrate zookeepers' bids to halt their falling numbers (remember how often it was no ding-a-Ling-Ling for Hsing-Hsing?), now estimated to be about a thousand. "The male panda can only mate for ten to twenty seconds at a time," says the Beijing Youth Daily, "and hence the chances of getting the female pregnant are very low. With Viagra, the male could mate for up to twenty minutes." The problem with traditional Chinese herbal remedies, says Zhang Hemin, who runs a panda center in Sichuan, was domestic violence of a sort: the herbal treatments did boost the male panda's libidos, but they also tended to get a little hot under the collar and attack their would-be mates. "That obviously wasn't so good," he told the Times of London, "and so we had to end the experiment." Zhang also said the panda's love lives had to be improved by making their environments more natural, letting them watch television, and teaching them tasks with sex as a reward.
All models were at least 18 years old at the time of their performance. 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement.
