Male pandas today launched a PR offensive to try to reverse their ‘Bad Boy, Love them and leave them image’. Employing the services of a top Public Relations Company, today is the start of a campaign to reveal the truth about their more caring side.
‘’They have been tarred with an unfair brush,’ said one spokesman, ‘there is a rather tired joke that seems to have been around forever that implies male pandas are all sexually immoral, seeking only nourishment, quick sexual thrills, and then deserting the poor female panda. We are here to change this unfair perception that a male panda just ‘eats, shoots and leaves’. While it is clearly true that bamboo is their staple diet, we fail to see how that can possibly be linked with sexual behaviour.’
The spokesman continued, ‘what people do not realise is that the mating window of Giant Pandas is extremely limited, and there is limited satisfaction to be had from it. In many ways, pandas are similar to married human couples: the female’s mating window occurs for a short time, once a year, and actual copulation lasts between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. As we all know, pandas in captivity struggle to have sex at all: compare that to a married couple with a mortgage. This is very far from the image of the serial one night stand lothario that is implied by this silly joke.’
However, some zoologists are concerned about the accuracy of this campaign. Dr Giles Aldbrough has expressed his concerns to the media ‘Giant Pandas are not paragons of sexual morality,’ he said, ‘while it is true that they are not promiscuous to a level implied by the popular joke, they only really meet females in order to have sex, and they play no part in helping to bring up any panda cubs that result from their union. I must agree that I know of no Panda that has ever consumed lager, or driven a Ford Fiesta around a market square on a Friday night but that does not change my opinion of them.’
The media campaign starts today.