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Psychics predict panda pregnancy

Goshawk

Graduate Poster
Goshawk
Joined
Jan 25, 2003
Messages
1,451
Nobody's seen this yet?

Link.

The gist of it is, at Zoo Atlanta, they hired a couple of psychics to tell them whether their recently artificially-inseminated panda is preg or not.
Atlanta-born psychic Helene Frisch said she telepathically connected with Lun Lun using "tone vibration," the release said.

Frisch said she discerned that not only is Lun Lun pregnant, but she will likely bear a male cub by September 4.

Another psychic -- Andy Liu, a native of China -- used the ancient I Ching to calculate a 65 percent chance that Lun Lun is pregnant.
Click to expand...

Watch this space; they said they should know later this month whether she's preg.
 
Dang, Ramoone's thread wasn't there when I started typing! :D

Darat, could you lock this one, or merge them or something?
 
[blushes]


Anyway...Helene Frisch has quite a resume. "Fourth-generation psychic", indeed.

I think it's fascinating that she proudly admits to having been trained as a professional actor, at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
 
I wonder if she'll admit to not having any animal psychic powers if it turns out the panda isn't pregnant? Naw. That would be silly. She would probably say that the panda was pregnant, but just miscarried.

I think the silliest part of the "interview" was when she said the mama panda had already picked out a name.
 
I predict that somewhere right now a shark is getting pregnant.
 
Well, I've been getting updates from ZooAtlanta's Panda Watch, and I have to say that it's one of the most bizarre examples of wishful thinking triumphing over "science" that I've ever seen. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that these are the people who called in a couple of psychics to tell them whether their panda was pregnant.

The whole thing is a morass of hopeful speculation, and reminds me of nothing so much as People magazine's endless speculation on, say, Tom and Katie's baby.

They keep measuring the progestins in her urine, because when the progestin level plummets, that means she's about to give birth. So her progestin level remains high, and this they rationalize by saying, "Well, she's only urinating once a day, maybe the progestins are just being concentrated in her urine."

They're working from the assumption that she IS pregnant, and reporting everything that she does ("she ate very little today, which is normal in pregnant or pseudopregnant females") as potential confirmation, rather than working from the assumption that she's NOT pregnant. Optimism reigns supreme.

She chews on her nesting box--"This might be nesting behavior."

"She made chomping sounds a few times today...It is characterized as being a defensive threat. It’s normal for pregnant and pseudopregnant females to become defensive." So, follow the logic here: pregnant and pseudopregnant females become defensive, and she made a "defensive" noise, so...she's pregnant!

"She was restless for a few hours yesterday evening. Restlessness sometimes precedes labor." I mean, sheesh. You talk about the National Enquirer picking apart every little thing that Britney, Jennifer, and Angelina do or say, or point at, or look at, or wear, or eat, or appear in public with on a leash. "Madonna was restless last night--is her marriage on the rocks?"

Very very bizarre.

And BTW, they did an ultrasound on August 15: no fetus. And Lun Lun, not surprisingly, is refusing to cooperate with any more ultrasounds since then. I'd be uncooperative and restless, too, if I had keepers peering in at me every 15 minutes. I'd probably even chew on my nesting box a bit.
 
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You know, I have to stick up for Zoo Atlanta here. My guess is that they know exactly how silly they're being. They know that psychics can't predict ursine pregnancies. They know that they really have very little information as to whether their panda is pregnant. And they know that they're not giving science the best possible reputation.

But I think they also know that people love pandas. And people love baby pandas. And people who love baby pandas come and pay money to see them at the zoo. That's money that can be used for actual animal research. So, they do a little free publicity for their panda - the blog costs nothing and the psychics won't charge - and they get a lot of return on their investment. Fundraising is the ugly side of science.
 
Well, yeah, I see that; it's a public relations nightmare for the zoo, because they can't make any kind of definite announcement. I get that. But I still think they could have stuck to merely reporting the facts ("August 15: no baby yet"), and left out the breathless Julia-Roberts-is-carrying-twins! speculation.

Also, I very much doubt that the psychics didn't charge anything; Helene Frisch at least has been doing this a long time, and she charges $55 for a half-hour private reading over the phone. I doubt whether she donated her services--why should she?
 
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Goshawk said:
Also, I very much doubt that the psychics didn't charge anything; Helene Frisch at least has been doing this a long time, and she charges $55 for a half-hour private reading over the phone. I doubt whether she donated her services--why should she?
Click to expand...

I assume that the psychics would do it for free for the publicity, the way they all show up when there's a missing child. But if the zoo paid even a cent for a psychic opinion, then I take it all back.
 
"Giant panda cub born in Atlanta." Wednesday afternoon at 4:51 pm. So she missed it by 2 days. And given that she had a 50% chance of being right, I don't think it counts as a "hit". She could just as easily have guessed wrong.

As of this morning they don't know the gender of the cub, BTW. Also no word on whether there's a twin yet, which could still occur today. That would be something that the psychic would have missed, big time.
 
If anyone wants to buy a suitcase full of panda meat, let me know.

I need room in my freezer for bald eagles.
 
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