Looduskalender

August 23, 2013
Dear Macdoum,

Giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo 5:32 p.m. The panda team heard the cub vocalize and glimpsed the cub for the first time briefly immediately after the birth. Mei Xiang picked the cub up immediately and began cradling and caring for it.

Behavior watchers have been monitoring her 24 hours a day since Aug. 7 via the panda cams. The panda team began preparing for a birth when they saw her water break around 3:36 p.m. and she began having contractions. Mei Xiang started spending extended amounts of time body licking and cradling her toys Aug. 11, all signs that she could give birth.

For the first time this year scientists used another test developed by the Memphis Zoo which analyzed Mei Xiang’s levels of prostaglandin metabolite (a fatty acid) to narrow the window when she would give birth or experience a pseudopregnancy. Scientists at the Memphis Zoo performed the analysis and determined that if Mei Xiang were pregnant she would likely give birth during the last week of August. If she were not, her pseudopregnancy would have likely ended in early September.

“I’m glued to the new panda cams and thrilled to hear the squeals, which appear healthy, of our newborn cub,” said Dennis Kelly, director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. “Our expansive panda team has worked tirelessly analyzing hormones and behavior since March, and as a result of their expertise and our collaboration with scientists from around the world we are celebrating this birth.”

Read more about Mei Xiang's pregnancy and the birth



Giant Panda

Thank you so much for your interest in pandas and the Smithsonian's National Zoo!

HOME AJC.com
LOCAL NEWS
Updated: 1:54 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, 2013 | Posted: 12:23 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, 2013
Panda twins turn out to be female
22 199 61 587
View Larger
new pandas
Jason Getz / AJC
Pandas, thought to be boys, are actually girls.
Related

Surprise! Pandas are girls! gallery
Surprise! Pandas are girls!
By Bo Emerson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Oops.
Zoo Atlanta is going to have to rearrange its pronouns again.
Those twin panda boys, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, have turned out to be twin panda girls.
Deputy director Dwight Lawson and associate veterinarian Sam Rivera revealed the news at a press conference Friday morning.
It’s notoriously difficult to figure out the gender of giant pandas, and panda watchers remember that a similar mix-up happened with the twins’ older sibling Mei Lan, 7, who was thought to be a female until Mother Nature made the truth obvious at age 3. The genders of the twins were determined with blood tests, rather than physical examinations, which are difficult and unreliable.
“They are covered up in fur, and you really can’t look and they don’t want you to look,” Lawson said.
Oh, by the way, brother Po also happens to be female. Older brother Xi Lan is, at latest report, still a boy. “So most of our boys are now girls,” said Lawson, who confessed to a poor record when it comes to determining panda gender. “Our batting average is one out of five.”
Is this “The Crying Game” in reverse? There’s no crying for the conservators at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the Sichuan province of China, who are rejoicing that there are more potential panda moms in Atlanta.
All the giant pandas at Zoo Atlanta are the property of the Chinese facility. Xi Lan, 5, and Po, 3, were scheduled to be transferred to China this fall, when veterinarians determined they weren’t quite heavy enough to make the trip in good health.
“We wanted them to be fat and sassy,” Lawson said. The zoo staff decided to postpone that trip until early next year. It was during the preparatory medical exams that Po was discovered to be a female. “We tried to confirm Po without anesthesia, but it is very difficult, and not safe for us,” Rivera said.
A blood test revealed the truth. Veterinarians also decided to test the twins at the same time, and were able to retrieve blood samples without any anesthesia.
Lawson said none of the pandas’ names will change, and neither will any other aspect of their care. But in the future, the zoo will probably use blood tests to determine the gender of its panda cubs, and will probably do so at an earlier age. At 16 and 15 pounds, Mei Huan and Mei Lun are gaining strength and wandering around on exhibit.
Exhibit space will be tight for a while, since pandas are solitary animals and the older siblings and dad Yang Yang are being kept in separate enclosures.
A five-year permit to keep Yang Yang and his bride Lun Lun at Zoo Atlanta elapses in 2014, and the zoo plans to negotiate to keep the pair another five years.

Katinka wrote:asteria - good evening!
Sorry to read about the Zoo in Danmark that makes you so speechless -
My English reserves today have gone out, but I like to hint at the European Zoo breeding programme (EEP - European Endangered species Programme).
It cannot be pointed out often enough (alright, in an unemotional mode), that we human beings are only the one species on earth. Whilst we decided to catch wild animals that are endangered and give them a chance to live on in a zoo - it is a serious task to care for healthy genes incl. "killing" an animal nobody can keep for any senseful zoo life.
Or is it the better way to donate an animal to a circus where it suffers from bad circumstances?