How obsessed is the public with pandas? Pretty obsessed, says the National Zoo’s Lindsay Renick-Mayer. That’s why the zoo decided to live-tweet the artificial insemination of lady panda Mei Xiang.

“We always want to try to give updates to the public as much as we can,” Renick-Mayer told Yeas & Nays. “We figured Twitter would be a great platform for that.”

Monday night’s artificial insemination, to broadcast via Twitter to the world, comes after Mei Xiang and partner Tian Tian couldn’t quite make the magic happen over the weekend. “They had a chance to breed naturally yesterday,” Renick-Mayer said. “They did not succeed.”

The steps of the process could be followed using the hashtag #pandaAI. The head of the zoo’s center for species survival, Dave Wildt, manned the feed.

Zoo staff won't know if Mei Xiang is with child until late summer.