Giant panda Tian Tian nosed through a green spool of leaf-eater biscuits and fruit, spinning and shaking it around to dig out every piece of food Saturday morning at the Smithsonian National Zoo, seemingly unaware of his newborn “miracle” offspring, cradled in its mother’s arms in the next den over.
The evening before, 22-year-old giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub at 6:35 p.m. after almost four hours in labor, becoming the oldest panda in the U.S. to have a successful pregnancy (the oldest to give birth on record in captivity, in China, was 23).
Reproductive scientists and zoo veterinarians used frozen semen collected from the 23-year-old Tian Tian (pronounced tee-YEN tee-YEN) back in 2015, artificially inseminating Mei Xiang (may-SHONG) in March. According to zoo staff, Mei Xiang had a less than 1% chance of getting pregnant again.
“Given her age, the odds were against us. That didn’t mean we didn’t hope because that’s what we do in the panda house,” Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director and former panda curator, said Saturday. “I always tell people who live around here that there are more black bears in the state of Virginia than there are pandas on the planet … We’re helping put more pandas on the planet.”
She described Mei Xiang’s cub as pink, helpless and tiny — about the size of a stick of butter. Within a few weeks, she said the cub should start to grow a down of white fur with light markings.
The panda zoo staff will not able to determine the sex of the cub until later since they will have to genetically test to look at the newborn’s chromosomes. Per tradition, the cub won’t be named until a ceremony held 100 days after its birth.
SEE ALSO: Panda cub born at D.C. National Zoo
Laurie Thompson, assistant curator of giant pandas at the National Zoo, was one of the staff present for the cub’s birth and had gotten called into the zoo around 3 p.m. Friday.
“We were certainly excited and we were ready for it to happen. We knew there was definitely going to be a birth because we saw it so recently on an ultrasound swimming around. So that was exciting, too,” she said.
Mei Xiang will probably stay cooped up in her den for a few days, without drinking or eating, to tend to her cub. Zoo staff expect to be able to grab the cub for a quick check up in a week when its mother finally leaves the den.
Steve Monfort, director of Smithsonian’s National Zoo, said the cub is nursing and vocalizing and appears to be very healthy.
“Over the next month or so, there’ll be a tremendous amount of growth for this young cub,” he said. “Our goal is to let them be together and not to interfere basically. Let mom be mom and do what they do … if everything is going well, there’s no real reason for us to be intervening at that time.”
Tian Tian won’t have any interaction with the cub except maybe through a window between the two giant pandas’ yards, said Ms. Thompson, noting that male giant pandas don’t have any role in taking care of cubs.
The panda house will be closed to the public for months, zoo staff said, to provide peace and quiet for Mei Xiang to nurse her cub, though fans should be able to check the status of mother and cub on the zoo’s popular “Panda Cam” online.
Shortly after the zoo opened Saturday, visitors strolled along the lower end of the zoo’s Asia Trail, a path marked by bamboo trees, to catch a glimpse of Tian Tian, the father of the cub, in his outdoor yard.
Paxten and Lucas Baker brought their 10-month-old daughter, Evelyn, who was dressed in a striped panda decorated onesie.
“We’d figure we let her come to the zoo and see her favorite animal so far,” said Mrs. Baker. “We’ve been following to see when the new panda would come … We were excited to learn that the panda was expecting and it’s kind of cool to be here right after.”
Mei Xiang previously gave birth to three surviving cubs: Tai Shan (tie-SHON) on July 9, 2005, Bao Bao (BOW BOW) on Aug. 23, 2013 and Bei Bei (BAY BAY) on Aug. 22, 2015.
Unlike with this recent pregnancy, scientists and veterinarians artificially inseminated Mei Xiang with fresh semen for her three other cubs. But due to COVID-19, Ms. Smith said the panda team decided to not collect fresh semen from Tian Tian since the two teams required for the procedure would not be able to socially distance in the panda house. The team opted to use frozen sperm instead since the zoo had large banks of it already on hand.
All of Mei Xiang’s cubs moved to China when they were four years old as part of a cooperative breeding agreement with a wildlife conservation organization. The agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association expires in December.
• Shen Wu Tan can be reached at stan@washingtontimes.com.
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