A VIDEO of female panda Tian Tian’s acrobatics at Edinburgh Zoo has left staff wondering if she is limbering up for love.
A video clip of Tian Tian playing with the “enrichment ball” was posted online by the zoo, where she performs a forward roll over the toy.
But male bear Yang Guang was uninterested in any fun in the run-up to Valentine’s Day tomorrow.
The three-minute YouTube video, filmed by panda keeper Alison Maclean, shows Tian Tian playing with the ball in her enclosure.
A laughing bystander says in the video: “I think we can safely say that’s a hit.”
Pandas only have a tiny 36 hour window of opportunity each year in which to breed, and in April last year a romance between the bears at Edinburgh Zoo failed to get off the ground.
Ms Maclean said: “Yang Guang just took one sniff at his ball, turned his nose up and wandered off — we think he just wasn’t interested as he couldn’t eat it!
“He definitely prefers food-based enrichment like honey, panda cake and apples.”
She continued: “We’re planning on rolling Yang Guang’s ball around in Tian Tian’s hay to cover it in her scent, so we imagine he might suddenly get interested in the ball then.”
Keepers will give the pandas the balls every few weeks to keep them a novelty, with different scents each time.
