What you're hearing are the sounds of two pandas in love.

She kept going to his side of the pen and just, you know, calling to him and checking

and on him and, you know, just felt like one of those very unfortunate, like Romeo and

Julia, I feel very sorry for something.

Love takes up a lot of human attention.

We write movies, books, and music about it.

We talk endlessly to our friends about dating and our partners, but how big of a role does

love play in the lives of our non-human animal friends.

I'm Shayla Love, and you're listening to Scientific Americans Science Quickly.

We've been digging into different aspects of love, and today we're going to leave people

behind to ponder if animals feel love, and if how we answer that question tells us anything

about the way we see non-human animals and what love is at all.

Megan Martin is a conservation biologist in Portland, but another way to describe

what she does is that she's an animal matchmaker.

She directs PDX wildlife, a non-profit that's dedicated to helping animals get it on while

in captivity.

What she's probably most known for is helping pandas breathe.

It's a fun thing, arranging pandas to be dating, you know, I really enjoy my work.

When animals aren't breeding on their own, Megan and her team encourage them by looking

at the animal's environment and making changes that better match how mating might occur

in nature.

For pandas, one technique they're using is introducing male, male competition.

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