Porn For Pandas

(CBS)  Pandas may be a lot of things, but passionate is not one of them. Given the chance of a roll in the bamboo with a cute female, the average male panda would, thanks all the same, rather spend the day taking a nap, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen.

So Chinese scientists are trying a little panda pandering -- making a video starring a couple of x-rated pandas -- explaining the birds and bees to bears.

When that doesn't work, they turn to artificial insemination.

If it sounds crazy, maybe even a touch desperate, remember that it's just an indication of how difficult is the battle to keep these cuddly creatures among us.

For something like three million years, pandas roamed at will in China. Now, the best guess is that there are about 1,200 left in the world -- living in the wild, in zoos, or at research facilities -- not many if you're trying to save a whole species from extinction.

And if the mating problem wasn't enough, there's the food problem -- it's running out.

Pandas eat massive amounts of bamboo that's disappearing in this increasingly urban country. So the Chinese cooked up another idea.

A panda version of animal crackers -- using some bamboo but adding vitamins and fiber. They taste-tested the biscuits on pandas at a South China preserve.

"They love it," said one panda scientist.

So it will soon be on the diet for all China's pandas in captivity.

The pandas have no natural enemies -- only man who cuts down their habitat and homes.

And now, only man can save these gentle giants whose only faults seem to be that they are too often hungry and too seldom lucky in love.