Via Smithsonian’s National Zoo

After going dark for six weeks, the National Zoo’s online tool for obsessive duotone bear fans is back online. The Giant Panda Cam came back today following an extensive upgrade paid for by a $400,000 grant last year from the Ford Motor Co.

Panda stalkers can now watch live streaming video of Mei Xiang and Tian “Weakly Loaded” Tian on their computers, smart phones, and tablets. The cameras trained on Mei Xiang, who may or may not be pregnant with another panda’s cub, are also in high-definition. Unfortunately, though, you have to jump to the National Zoo’s website, as the camera feeds are not embeddable.

Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated in March, the second time in as many years that the National Zoo is trying to get its uninterested pandas to mate. Of course, given panda biology, whether Mei Xiang is actually with child won’t be known for several more weeks.

This is surely all very well and exciting to those who inexplicably love pandas without reservation, but after watching the bears in their enhanced surveillance state, they appear as layabout and dull as ever.

Ford announced its gift of $400,000 in panda sex money last September, shortly before the birth of a cub that died a week later.