Lead expert Benjamin Charlton along with colleagues Zhang Zhihe and Rebecca Snyder, took the bleats, barks, moans, honks, growls, roars and squeals from 4 Atlanta pandas along with those from 14 adult pandas in Chengdu, and processed them through a special computer application to work out their meaning.

Males it seems provide information about their size, warning smaller pandas to keep away thus avoiding confrontation and let females know how strong and healthy they are.

Females on the other hand, provide information on their age, so that males can stay away from too young a female panda and chase after a more experienced female.