“He Ye is not a little brother but a little sister.” That is the label that has gone viral this Wednesday throughout China when it was learned that this giant panda, one of the most famous at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Base, has turned out to be female and not male, as previously thought. since he was born in 2020.
In a video posted by the Base on Weibo (similar to that he was a boy.”
However, as it grew it stopped developing male characteristics, which caught the attention of breeders. Biological samples were taken from the animal, confirming suspicions: she is female.
The tag “He Ye is not a little brother but a little sister” went viral on Chinese networks on Wednesday after the news broke, with some two hundred million views and comments in which Internet users were happy that the animal could continue living with his sister He Hua, since if they had been male and female they would have been separated eventually.
Determining the sex of a panda is a complex matter. It is not the first time that a panda turns out to be the opposite sex from what it was believed to be when it was born: He Ye and He Hua’s own father, born at the American Zoo in Atlanta in 2006, was initially identified as female, something that also happened with brothers Pu Pu and Fa Fa, born in 2014 in Chengdu.
In general, it is difficult to determine this because they do not show secondary sexual characteristics and because their genitals are partially hidden, although in recent times techniques have been developed to obtain this information more reliably.
