Zoo keepers hope the UK's only giant panda couple will mate today after female Tian Tian spurned her partner in favour of sleep.
Tian Tian and Yang Guang, residents of Edinburgh Zoo, are primed for breeding but an encounter yesterday did not produce the desired result.
Animal experts said sleepy Tian Tian (Sweetie) was not quite at her peak but the pandas will be reunited today to see if she is in the mood.
A zoo spokeswoman said last night: "Another enclosure swap will take place - Tian Tian will go into Yang Guang's outdoor enclosure and vice versa.
"This will give us the perfect opportunity to again monitor what stage Tian Tian has then reached. We hope she will continue to progress overnight and fully hit peak tomorrow morning."
Tian Tian and Yang Guang (Sunshine) arrived from China in December 2011 and were introduced to each other before last year's breeding season but did not mate.
Signs that Tian Tian is once again in season include grumpy behaviour and loss of appetite.
She will only have a 36-hour breeding window and during that time the pandas will meet up to three times a day for 15 to 30-minute intervals.
She will also be artificially inseminated to increase her chances of getting pregnant.
Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) which owns the zoo, said: "We are hopeful as the breeding season of both bears seems to be really in sync this year.
"However, nothing is a foregone conclusion with giant pandas and with pregnancy in general. Not every successful mating leads to pregnancy."
Tian Tian and Yang Guang are the first giant pandas to live in the UK for 17 years.
If Tian Tian becomes pregnant, confirmation will come in mid-July when experts can carry out an ultrasound scan. It would then be likely that her cub or cubs would be born at the end of August or the beginning of September.
The normal breeding season for pandas is mid-April to May.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article