BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese zoologists have found that artificial insemination of giant pandas works better in their natural habitat than in zoos, China‘s Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. In all, 27 pandas lived past their precarious first six months of life out of 45 born using frozen sperm at a wildlife breeding ground near Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province, Xinhua reported. The 60 percent survival rate was twice as high as the average for pandas bred artificially in zoos, Xinhua said. Only 140 pandas have been artifically bred in captivity worldwide since the method was pioneered in 1963, Xinhua said. Fewer than 1,000 of the sexually temperamental animals exist, most of them in bamboo-rich Sichuan.