It's Back To China For London Panda -- Ming Ming Just Said No

LONDON - It's bye-bye to Ming Ming. Britain's only giant panda failed to get pregnant, so she is being recalled to China.

"She was on a breeding loan and we had hoped she would mate with Bao Bao, a panda from Berlin. But pandas are strange creatures, like ourselves, and they just didn't hit it off," Jamie Gordon, a London Zoo spokesman, said Friday.

Ming Ming, 16, arrived at the zoo in Regent's Park in October 1991 on a two-year breeding loan. Bao Bao came over from Berlin and keepers crossed their fingers.

But Ming Ming, who weighs 168 pounds, didn't respond to Bao Bao's advances and the spurned suitor began throwing his 294 pounds around.

"He got a bit frustrated," said the zoo's director, Jo Gipps.

Gordon said the two pandas never mated and an attempt to artificially inseminate Ming Ming was not successful.

Bao Bao returned to Berlin in May 1993.