Monday, September 17, 2012

birth of new baby panda

The National Zoo’s female giant panda gave birth to a cub Sunday night, stunning and delighting zoo officials and sparking a new wave of panda mania in Washington seven years after the zoo’s only other cub was born in 2005. The cub was born at 10:46 p.m. to Mei Xiang, the zoo said, and curator Becky Malinsky happened to be watching the 24-hour-a-day panda camera feed and heard the first squealing of the newborn “I got a call . . . a little after 10:45” from a senior curator saying “the behavior watcher just saw a birth,” said Don Moore, associate director for animal-care sciences. “I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s not April Fools’ yet, so I’m going back to bed. ’ She said, ‘No, no, really. There’s been a panda. Congratulations.’ ” “I was not believing it,” Moore said Monday. “We gave this a very low percentage. We were prepared for another disappointment. . . . We bucked the odds. . . and we’ve got a baby on the ground.” Chief veterinarian Suzan Murray said in a media release that based on what the zoo has seen so far, Mei Xiang is "is behaving exactly the same way she did when Tai Shan was born. She is cradling her cub closely, and she looks so tired, but every time she tries to lay down, the cub squawks and she sits right up and cradles the cub more closely. "She is the poster child for a perfect panda mom." Mei Xiang, a 14-year-old female whose name is Chinese for "beautiful fragrance," gave birth to a cub late Sunday night, according to the zoo. The cub is her second with the male Tian Tian. The panda couple's first cub, a male named Tai Shan, was born in 2005 and currently resides at a panda breeding facility in China. Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated with sperm from Tian Tian in April after she and Tian Tian weren't able to mate. Scientists still aren't exactly sure why pandas have such trouble mating in captivity, but the stress of captivity may play a role. Panda females also have a very narrow window to conceive: about one to three days, once a year. Sources: ibtimes The Washington Post huffingtonpost

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