National Zoo Instagrams international travels of frozen Giant Panda semen

WASHINGTON — The National Zoo makes no secret that its Giant Pandas are the stars of the show. And the annual “Giant Panda pregnancy watch” is the biggest attention grabber of all. Each spring, for more than a decade, the Smithsonian Institution National Zoological Park’s publicity machine has rolled out enough panda fodder to keep the public (and news organizations) steeped in “is she pregnant or isn’t she” hype. One of the things that helps stoke the excitement is that even scientists can’t really tell whether the female giant panda Mei Xiang is pregnant. So, while scientists at the zoo monitor behavioral changes and hormone levels, trying to decipher whether there’s a cub in the oven, the Giant Panda’s belly doesn’t provide the telltale signs that a human belly can. Either a baby panda will be born — always described as “the size of a stick of butter” — or zoo officials declare it was a pseudopregnancy. This will be remembered as the year the zoo Instagrammed the travels of semen donated by Hui Hui, a 9-year-old panda living in China. Thankfully, the zoo did not document the “harvesting” of the sample.

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