While cuddly duo Wang Wang and Fu Ni will soon be set to return home to China, Adelaide Zoo is adamant that the pandas' love affair with the public has fulfilled predictions from prior to their arrival.
Giant pandas Wang Wang and Fu Ni may not have mated, but have enjoyed a love affair with the publicFor the past decade and a half, Adelaide Zoo 's two giant pandas have assumed a variety of guises in the public imagination.
Perhaps the expectations that the pandas — who are coming to the end of a 15-year stay in South Australia — would produce offspring have been unfairly high. After all, their fertility window is, according to experts, a mere 36 hours. "When you're talking about billions of dollars of resource contracts and you're talking about tens of thousands of students, it's also important to find in the relationship, the warmth and exhilaration that can come from the temporary residence of such lovely creatures,"
The annual panda breeding season has perennially raised hopes of a pregnancy, with zookeepers and vets each year closely monitoring for signs that the breeding window was imminent. "We will provide a new pair of equally beautiful, lovely and adorable pandas to the Adelaide Zoo," Chinese Premier Li Qiang declared on Sunday.Foreign Minister Penny Wong with China's Premier Li Qiang and SA Premier Peter Malinauskas at Adelaide Zoo on Sunday.The cost of the creatures has been questioned by some, but SA's premier Peter Malinauskas has insisted there'll be bang for buck.
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