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Pandas have great difficulty reproducing. The Washington Post noted in March that Mei Xiang's efforts to mate had been rather ineffective:

"In past years, they've shown excellent sexual behavior but have been a bit out of sync," Lisa Stevens, the zoo's assistant curator for giant pandas, said yesterday. "We're very concerned about the lack of synchrony."

Translation: The male giant panda is eager, Stevens said, but has "alignment" problems; the female cries out to him loudly and displays other come-hither behavior, but then lies flat on her stomach.

As it turned out, the zoo had to resort to artificial insemination to get Mei Xiang knocked up; and it really was a now-or-never situation: "Giant pandas are capable of becoming pregnant for only a day or two once each year."

As Slate's David Plotz noted in 1999, the zoo's previous panda pair, Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling, also were carnally clueless:

At first Hsing-Hsing failed to inseminate Ling-Ling because he tried to mate with her ear and her arm. (He may have been inept because he never learned about mating in the wild.) Then the zoo imported a male panda from London Zoo to mate with Ling-Ling. He mauled her instead. (So much for panda comity.) Eventually Hsing-Hsing got it right, and between 1983 and 1989, Ling-Ling bore five of his cubs. All of them died within days. One cub perished after Ling-Ling sat on it. Another seems to have been killed by a urinary tract infection acquired from Ling-Ling. Keepers believe Ling-Ling infected herself by sticking bamboo and carrots up her urinary tract, surely neurotic behavior.