Beijing (AFP) - A Chinese man who sued local government officials over an attack by a wild panda has won more than $80,000 in compensation, his lawyer said Monday. 
 
 The animals are renowned for their lovable appearance but despite their placid, bamboo-chewing image they are members of the bear family and have a fearsome bite. 
 
 The animal wandered into Liziba village, in the northwestern province of Gansu, where local officials trying to capture it chased it onto Guan Quanzhi's land, the Lanzhou Evening News reported. 
 
 "I saw a panda jump out in front of me, its body completely covered in mud," he told the newspaper. 
 
 The creature bit him in the leg and only released its grip when another villager covered its head with a coat, the report said, and the incident in March last year left Guan with injuries requiring seven hours of surgery. 
 
 The panda escaped. 
 
 Guan's son sued local forestry officials and the nearby Baishuijiang National Nature Reserve, which is home to more than 100 wild pandas. 
 
 Following "negotiations", officials agreed to pay compensation of 520,000 yuan ($83,000), his lawyer Wang Chaohui told AFP. 
 
 Guan is "satisfied with the amount", which will cover his medical bills, he said, adding that he may need further operations. 
 
 The giant panda's natural habitat mostly lies in mountainous southwestern China. They have a notoriously low reproductive rate and are under pressure from factors such as habitat loss. 
 
 The number of wild giant pandas rose nearly 17 percent over the decade to 2013 to reach 1,864, state media cited an official survey data as saying this month, with a government agency crediting conservation measures for the increase. 
 
 Pandas are a major generator of tourist revenue in several parts of China and for Beijing, which capitalises on the global fascination with the animals by renting them to foreign zoos. 
 
 They have been known to attack humans, including in 2008 when a panda mauled a 20-year-old man who climbed into its enclosure at a zoo in southern China. 
 
 The nature conservation organisation WWF says on its website: "As cuddly as they may look, a panda can protect itself as well as most other bears," using its heavy weight, strong jaw muscles and large molar teeth. 
 
 It cautions: "Although used mainly for crushing bamboo, a panda bite can be very nasty." ||||| The villager shows his injured leg after being attacked by a panda. [Photo/Lanzhou Evening News] 
 
 Villager compensated for wild panda attack 
 
 A villager in Northwest China's Gansu province has been compensated 520,000 yuan ($83,000) because his right leg may require amputation after an attack by a wild panda. 
 
 Guan Quanzhi, a farmer in Li Baizi village, was working on his farmland on March 1, 2014 when a wild panda chased by other villagers ran onto his land. All of a sudden, the panda got hold of his leg before he had time to respond. 
 
 He had eight surgeries in the past year and sued three government departments that are responsible for controlling wild animals. 
 
 The forestry bureau at the provincial level and of Longnan city as well as the management bureau of Baishuijiang Natural Reserve agreed to pay the compensation. 
 
 The panda that attacked the villager.[Photo/Lanzhou Evening News] 
 
 That's all for today's trending, do check back tomorrow for more! ||||| Giant panda cubs are more likely when mom and dad find "love," new research suggests. Here, a cub eats bamboo shoots at the Bifengxia Chinese Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan, China. 
 
 There's a secret to making panda babies, and it looks a little bit like love. 
 
 Pandas are more likely to produce young when they have a preference for the partner they're meant to mate with, a new study finds. If "love" is too strong a word for this preference, it's safe to say that panda lust, at least, plays a role in reproductive success. 
 
 In a new study published Tuesday (Dec. 15) in the journal Nature Communications, researchers allowed pandas to pick their own mates by letting them observe a pair of opposite-sex bears through barriers in a special enclosure. Bears showed their romantic interest by making chirping noises and scent-marking near their preferred partner. 
 
 This freedom of choice turned out to have a major effect on the likelihood of pandas reproducing. Overall, mutual attraction raised the rates of successful mating and cub-rearing from around zero percent when the two bears weren't interested in one another to 75 percent when they were both attracted. [Photos: A Panda Cub Grows Up] 
 
 Data broken down by gender illustrates the effect. When a female was paired for mating purposes with a male she preferred, the pair had successful sex 70 percent of the time, compared with only about 30 percent of the time when fertile females were placed with a male they weren't interested in. Females gave birth to a cub 90 percent of the time when a preferred male was the father versus 40 percent of the time when they mated with a non-preferred male. And 100 percent of pandas who copulated with a preferred male cared for their offspring, a number that dropped to 80 percent in pandas whose offspring were fathered by unappealing mates. 
 
 Male choice mattered, too — a surprising finding, given that females that do all the gestation and rearing are generally thought to be pickier than males who invest less of themselves. But panda males invest considerable time and energy in wooing females in the wild and fending off rival males, researcher Meghan Martin-Wintle of the Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego Zoo Global and PDXWildlife in Portland and her colleagues wrote. Thus, they have to be choosy about which female pandas they pursue. 
 
 When males got busy with a preferred female, they completed the sex act more than 70 percent of the time, compared with only about 30 percent of the time when mating with an unappealing female. Mating resulted in cubs almost 80 percent of the time when males picked a female they liked, but only 60 percent of the time when they had to mate with a non-preferred partner. And panda moms seemed influenced by whether the male had seen them as a good match: When males mated with a preferred partner, that female reared her cub more than 90 percent of the time. When the male fathered a cub with a female he didn't prefer, the likelihood of maternal care dropped to less than 70 percent. 
 
 Overall, the researchers found, mutual attraction can improve panda reproduction. Giving pandas free reign over their mate choices, however, may be tougher than it sounds. Conservation breeders have to be careful to ensure genetic variability in endangered species like pandas, which are few in number. But if breeders were to pre-screen bears for genetic diversity and then check in on how the pandas respond to one another, that would allow for "the best of both worlds," Martin-Wintle and her colleagues wrote. 
 
 The research was conducted at the Bifengxia Chinese Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan, China. China is working to reintroduce pandas into the wild, a goal that will require breeding more pandas than in the past. To meet this goal, the researchers wrote, biologists will need a better of understanding of how pandas reproduce on their own in the wild. 
 
 Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.
– Pandas may prefer their meals in the form of bamboo, but that doesn't mean their bite is toothless. A man in China recently received a harsh reminder of that after a wild panda bit his leg after authorities pursued the critter onto his lawn, reports AFP via Yahoo. The creature had made its way into a northwestern village, which is near a sanctuary that's home to about 100 wild pandas. "I saw a panda jump out in front of me, its body completely covered in mud," the man told local news. A struggle ensued, in which the bear wouldn't release the man's leg until a rescuer wrapped a coat around the animal's head. Finally, it fled—but not before causing injuries which, China Daily reports, led to eight surgeries over the past year and may lead to amputation. The man sued three government departments and won an $83,000 payout that will cover his medical costs, his lawyer says. (China Daily has a pretty gruesome photo of the injury.) "As cuddly as they may look, a panda can protect itself as well as most other bears," the World Wildlife Fund notes, per AFP. Indeed, panda attacks have led to some nasty consequences in the past.