The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A giant panda at the National Zoo gave birth to a cub Saturday evening, launching a fresh chapter in the public romance with the rotund black and white bears that have enthralled Washington and legions of panda fanatics for 43 years.
Pamela Baker-Masson, the zoo spokeswoman, said the staff was “thrilled, absolutely thrilled.”
“I’ve been in close communication with veterinarians, the scientists, keepers. Everybody’s extremely happy,” she said. “We were all tuned in to the panda-cam, and we saw her water break. And then just about an hour later … she gave birth to a cub.”
The loud vocalizations from the cub after birth were a “great sign for good health,” noted Baker-Masson, who said staff watched with awe as the mother panda picked up her new cub, about the size of a stick of butter.
Inside the panda house Saturday afternoon, a small, rapt knot of onlookers watched on a video monitor as Mei Xiang tossed and turned inside her cage. Then around 4:30 p.m., zoo officials confirmed that the panda’s water had broken.
Susan Powell, 51, had been standing with her son and granddaughter as Mei Xiang labored on the black-and-white screen. Powell, who was visiting her son from her home outside of Magnolia, Arkansas, said the event was a rare treat.
“In south Arkansas, we don’t have anything like this,” she said. “We get deer and foxes, but not pandas.”
Powell’s granddaughter, Jorja, 7, sat on a wooden block nearby with her father. “I think it’s really cool,” the girl said. Her nickname when she was younger, she said, was “Panda” — because she is half-white and half-Asian, she joked.
Suddenly around 5:33, someone said, “I think it’s coming.”
A silence fell over the crowd. “Come on, sweet mama,” Powell said. “Come on, baby.”
At 5:35, the first glimpse of the baby came on the screen. People burst into applause and screamed, “Yes! Yes! Oh my god!”
Jorja jumped up: “She had a baby!”
Mei Xiang, who went into labor around 10:30 p.m., has already delivered two surviving cubs since 2005 – Tai Shan on July 9, 2005, and Bao Bao on Aug. 23, 2013.
She gave birth to a stillborn cub about 26 hours after Bao Bao. And on Sept. 16, 2012, she gave birth to a cub with liver abnormalities, and it died six days later.
Giant panda cubs, like many newborns at the zoo, are extremely fragile. Newborn giant panda cubs are the size of a large mouse. Six other giant panda cubs have died at the zoo, going back to the 1980s.
The birth came three years after zoo officials were prepared to request replacements for Mei Xiang and the zoo’s male giant panda, Tian Tian, because of their poor reproductive record. In 2011, the pair had gone five years without producing a cub.
The new cub was the second in two years.
At a press conference Saturday, zoo officials cautioned that Mei Xiang and her cub would need ti be monitored very closely. The mother and her offspring will be monitored on the panda cam around the clock , with staff on hand at all hours to respond, said the zoo’s director, Dennis Kelly.
“We’re very cautious,” Kelly said. “You’ll remember in 2012 we lost a cub after six days. This is still a very fragile time for this cub.”
Don Neiffer, the zoo’s chief veterinarian, appeared in his navy scrubs and described the walkip to the birth. Mei Xiang was behaving very lethargically, when Neiffer on Aug. 19 had spotted on an ultrasound scan what he said was a developing fetus inside the panda.
After Mei Xiang’s water broke, “she was bearing down a bit,” he said, before the cub arrived noisily into the world.
No decision have been made on when zoo staff will examine the cub for paternity, gender and general health, Neiffer said. The cub will be named after the examination, which could happen in two days or several weeks.
“There’s a lot of very important bonding going on right now,” he aaid. “We don’t want to disturb that.”
The giant panda had been artificially inseminated twice – on April 26 and 27 – with semen collected from Tian Tian and from a male giant panda at a research center in Wolong, China.
The Wolong panda, Hui Hui, was picked because he was a good genetic match for Mei Xiang, the zoo said. The sample from Hui Hui was frozen and flown from China to the zoo’s cryopreservation bank.
A DNA test can be used to see which male sired the cub. The gestation period for a female giant panda is between three and six months.
Giant pandas are native to China, and China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.
In 2011, the zoo reached a new lease agreement with China that extended the stay of the two giant pandas for five years. All cubs born in the zoo must be returned to China four years after birth. The new agreement expires Dec. 6, 2015.
The zoo’s two adult pandas – both born at the China Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong, Sichuan Province – arrived in Washington on Dec. 6, 2000.
The zoo’s first pandas, Ling Ling, a female, and Hsing Hsing, a male, arrived at the zoo in 1972, one of the fruits of President Richard Nixon’s peacemaking visit to China. Ling Ling died in 1992. Hsing Hsing was put to sleep in 1999, suffering from old age and a painful kidney disease. The pair produced several cubs but none lived more than a few days.
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