Sachi the red panda may have finally found love.
The furry female panda has been rumored to have shared more than a bamboo stick with male panda Tango at the Toucan Ridge enclosure at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, Manitoba, reports CBC News.
Since red pandas are an endangered species — with a population dropping more than 50 percent in the past three generations — zookeepers have been trying to breed Sachi with male suitors as part of the zoo’s species survival program.
“There are zoos literally around the world, internationally, trying to get red pandas to breed,” Bianca Johnson, a zookeeper at Toucan Ridge, told CBC News. “We don’t know exactly what it is that we do different, but they do seem to breed well here and every single one counts.”
But Sachi is a picky dater — a previous male suitor was too timid for her, and she only gets the urge to mate three times a year. Zookeepers say Tango is a much better match: He’s larger than Sachi, calmer and they like different foods.
Jessica Sjonnesen, another zookeeper, says that the two pandas have “been getting along very well.”
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