If test-tube embryos result, which should be known in a week, they will be frozen until a surrogate mother can be found. The procedure has never been tried in pandas, but increasingly is being tried on other endangered animals. A rare type of antelope, cow and cat have been implanted successfully into a common variety of the same animal. It's what I would have done. Not only are there many steps that could go wrong, but the procedure might be too risky to try with a surrogate mother giant panda, because the species is endangered, she said.
Panda reproduction is a highly uncertain business.
Only seven surviving cubs have been born outside China, some produced by artificial insemination. There are only about 1,000 pandas in the wild in their native China, and about 100 in zoos worldwide. The zoo association has banned all panda imports into this country since 1990, saying the practice could remove animals from captive breeding programs in China or endanger the supply of wild animals. The association suspended the Columbus Zoo last summer for bringing in a pair for display. But a group of American zoos that hope to borrow pandas for breeding at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars each are lobbying to change the policy.