Panda Wedding in Thai Zoo

Two pandas, 5-year-old male Chuang Chuang and 4-year-old female Lin Hui, were married in northern city of Chiang Mai Thailand, on Wednesday to mark the 28th birthday of their zoo in a traditional Chinese ceremony. Chiang Mai is Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's hometown. To avoid offending conservatives who think "marrying" animals is undignified, a proxy wedding by two proxies was arranged. The pandas live in a $1 million refrigerated cage. After the ceremony, the real pandas, which eat only bamboo, were showered with fruit. Their human proxies were sprinkled with water to fight the heat. Thailand's hot climate is expected to bring forward the pandas' mating season to November from the March-May period in their native China.