WASHINGTON – The National Zoo’s giant panda cub is squealing less often each day, and its mother has been catching up on some of the sleep she lost since its birth July 9. But the two are so tightly intertwined that keepers have not had a good look at the tiny newborn.
The mother, Mei Xiang, is known by her keepers as a vocal animal, but she became quiet after the birth. It was not until Wednesday evening that she once again began making noises of her own. On at least two occasions, she honked for several minutes, a relatively common panda sound.
The Panda House is closed for at least three months to give mother and cub peace and quiet, and the zoo is not taking any chances – an armed zoo police officer is stationed at the door. In a back den, visible only on camera, mother and cub are folded together in intimate embrace under the surveillance of keepers, volunteer monitors and thousands of people with Internet connections.
The birth was the first for Mei Xiang, who came to the National Zoo along with the cub’s father, Tian Tian, on a 10-year loan from China in 2000. In exchange, the zoo is paying $1 million a year in privately raised funds for panda conservation projects in China. The birth of the cub adds an additional fee, according to zoo spokeswoman Peper Long: $100,000 a month for each month the cub survives, up to a maximum of $600,000.
The park’s previous pair of pandas had five cubs in the 1980s, none of which lived more than four days. Cubs are extremely vulnerable – until recently, only about half of captive pandas lived for more than a month – but scientists have developed techniques that improved their odds.
The park’s previous pair of pandas had five cubs in the 1980s, none of which lived more than four days.
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