BBC News Online: Sci/Tech

China hopes for panda baby boom

As many as 20 cubs are expected

In the past half of artificially inseminated pandas have given birth to twins so as many as 20 cubs are expected, the official Xinhua news agency reports.

China has artificially bred 66 pandas in the past four years, in an attempt to save the notoriously under-sexed animal from extinction.

Nine of the pregnant pandas kept in captivity in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, have been moved into a newly completed air conditioned delivery room.

Low sex drive

The four other pandas expected to give birth this autumn are at a breeding base in Sichuan's Wolong Nature Reserve.

"According to our experience, 50% of them could be twins, and so there may be 13 to 20 new members of the panda family soon," said Zhang Anju, director of the Giant Panda Breeding Technology Committee of China.

Of the 66 pandas already bred artificially in China, 52 have survived, Xinhua reported.

In the past it has been claimed that the main problem with getting pandas to breed is that they have a fundamental lack of interest in sex.

Many solutions have been proposed in the past ranging from traditional Chinese aphrodisiacs to Viagra.