Giant Panda Baby Boom
July 29, 2005
After D.C. had its most successful Panda birthing to date, two other zoos are hopefully expecting giant panda cubs. It’s difficult to say because there’s no way to test for a panda pregnancy, and they sometimes have “pseudo-pregnancy” symptoms even when they don’t conceive. At Zoo Atlanta, Lun Lun has recently been eating less and showing hormonal changes, officials said. Only two giant panda cubs born in the U.S., both at the San Diego Zoo, have lived to adulthood. However, a giant panda, Ying Ying, gave birth to twin cubs at the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong, southwest China’s Sichuan province July 13.
The San Diego Zoo’s Nancy Czekala points out that there are complications behind impregnating pandas in captivity: They can become pregnant once a year in a two- or three-day window, they live mostly solitary lives, coming together only to mate, and they have to be mutually interested in order to mate. In this, they are quite different from humans.
San Diego Zoo
Zookeepers are hopeful their pandas are pregnant. Bai Yun and Gao Gao, both 13, mated in April. Bai Yun’s offspring would be the first cub in the born in the U.S. as the result of natural mating. Others were due to carefully timed artificial insemination. Don Lindburg, the San Diego Zoo’s panda conservation team leader, credits the success partly to active trading between institutions on insemination techniques, hormone monitoring systems and other pregnancy boosters.
Zoo Atlanta
The zoo’s giant pandas, Yang Yang and Lun Lun, may be expecting a cub. The male partner has not actually mated with Lun Lun. But the momma bear is showing symptoms of a pregnancy and zoo official have removed her from public display in order to monitor her around the clock. “She could give birth at any time — if she’s pregnant,” Zoo Atlantaspokeswoman Jacqueline Petty said recently. Zoo officials announced in March the Lun Lun would give birth by August.
National Zoo in Washington
A giant panda cub was born at the National Zoo July 9. Mei Xiang, who was impregnated by Tian Tian, has been cradling the white-haired cub, which zoo spokesman John Gibbons said was about “the size of a stick of butter.”
Successful panda births are rare. The zoo’s previous bears, the late Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, produced five cubs between 1983 and 1989 but all died within days. Mei Xian has been inseminated the last two springs, but this cub is her first.
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