Pan Pan, father to generation of pandas, dies at 31

Pan Pan, a giant panda whose virility helped spawn an entire generation of the notoriously difficult-to-breed animals, died this week at a conservation center in China’s Sichuan province.

At 31, Pan Pan was thought to be the world’s oldest male panda. He died Wednesday at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency in China. Pandas in the wild generally live to be about 20, but often survive longer in captivity.

“Pan Pan was the equivalent to about 100 human years, but he had been living with cancer, and his health had deteriorated in the past three days,” Tan Chengbin, a keeper at the conservation center, told Xinhua.

P a n d a s I n t e r n a t i o n a l , a Colorado-based charit y that supports conservation efforts, mourned the loss of Pan Pan in a blog post that described a visit to China in July to celebrate his 31st birthday.

Pan Pan was born in the wild in 1985 and taken into captivity shortly after. As part of a breeding program, he was especially successful at impregnating female pandas, a notoriously difficult feat for a species that is fertile for only two or three days a year.

“Pan Pan was really fast a n d a g i l e wh e n h e w a s young,” the spokesman said.

X i n h u a r e p o r t e d t h a t P a n P a n h a d more t h a n 130 descendants, and that his offspring and their cubs accounted for nearly a quarter of the more than 420 captive pandas alive worldwide today.

His descendants are found in zoos around the world. He sired Bai Yun, the giant panda who has lived at the San Diego Zoo since 1996, and he was the grandfather of Tai Shan, who in 2005 became the first surviving panda cub born in captivit y at the National Zoo in Washington.