Famous ‘male’ giant panda He Ye turns out to be female

Visitors take pictures as giant panda He Ye takes a nap at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, March 22, 2023. Photo:Xinhua

 
Celebrity giant panda He Ye, who has been believed to be male since it was born in July 2020, is in fact female, according to a post from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding on Wednesday.   

“When He Ye was just born, her gender characteristics leaned toward being male. A few months later, she showed more male-like characteristics such as high urination, lively personality, and tall stature, and these convinced everyone that He Ye was a boy,” a breeder surnamed Tan said in a video the base also posted. 

Tan is the breeder of He Ye and her older sister He Hua, who is normally called Hua Hua and has been dubbed a national darling by Chinese netizens.  

However, as He Ye grew up, her male characteristics did not develop accordingly, so the base invited a panda expert to collect biological samples from He Ye. After identification, it was finally confirmed that He Ye was a female giant panda, Tan explained. 

The incident became a trending topic on China’s Sina Weibo platform on Wednesday. The hashtag “He Ye turns from a younger brother to a younger sister” had attracted nearly 200 million views as of Wednesday. Chinese netizens heatedly discussed the complexity of identifying the gender of a giant panda. Some called on researchers to conduct similar investigations into other giant pandas. Some others felt happy as the twins can stay together for a longer time if they are both girls.     

In fact, it is not the first time a giant panda has had its gender misidentified. It is actually hard to identify a giant panda's gender, according to Tan. 

According to media reports, Mei Lan, father of He Hua and He Ye who was born in September 2006 at Zoo Atlanta in the US, was also once misidentified as a female giant panda.

The same thing also happened to twin giant pandas Pu Pu (older brother) and Fa Fa (younger sister) who were born in 2014 in the Chengdu base. Pu Pu was misidentified as a female until 2018. Visitors also found in 2023 that the gender of Fa Fa had also been changed from male to female. The twin giant pandas now live in the Shenyang Forest Zoo in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province. 

The gender of newborn giant panda cubs is generally difficult to determine. This is mainly because giant pandas do not exhibit obvious secondary sexual characteristics. The skin around their anus is highly elastic and covers the male reproductive organs, testes, and the female external genital opening, according to a post from the Northeast Forestry University. 

Following in-depth study of the physiological and anatomical structure of giant pandas by researchers, as well as the accumulation of breeding and feeding experience in captivity, it is now possible to accurately determine the gender of newborn giant pandas through physical examinations. In recent years, researchers have also developed various molecular methods for gender identification, which can be used to determine the gender of wild giant pandas during field investigations, read the post.