World's oldest male panda dies

Beijing (AFP) - The world's oldest male panda, with more than 130 descendants -- a quarter of all the captive-bred pandas on the planet -- has died aged 31, officials said.

Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key contributor -- along with habitat loss -- to their status as vulnerable on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.