Chiang Mai’s pandas are showing their Thaksinite leanings by refusing to cooperate with the new regime. In an important update on an earlier New Mandala story, the Bangkok Post reports:

Thailand’s Chiang Mai Zoo on Monday resorted to artificially inseminating a female panda after failing to stimulate a natural liaison between two pandas on loan from China with some bear pornography. “We have to admit that the panda pornography failed,” said Sopol Damnui, director of Thailand’s Zoological Park Organisation. The organisation had been piping in panda porn to the air-conditioned cage of Chuang Chuang, 6, and Lin Hui, 5, at the Chiang Mai Zoo since March 26 in the hopes that the scenes of explicit sex would prove an inspiration for the inexperienced couple. Unfortunately, nothing happened and zoo officials decided they couldn’t wait any longer… On Monday, a team of Thai, Chinese and US veterinarians extracted three lots of semen from Chuang Chuang and used it to artificially inseminate Lin Hui. A second attempt will be made on Tuesday and the third lot has been put on ice.

I’ll be putting something on ice too, to celebrate the birth!