I’m ready for a change in the weather, how about you? We are at the end of summer and Nighttime Zoo is winding down. The crowds are still excited about the new baby panda, coming in to see her here at the station. They are disappointed when they find she is not out. Of course they don’t realize that she is only 34 ounces (964 grams) and not quite ready for all the fanfair she will receive.
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It was a beautiful July morning in the Sierra San Pedro de MartÃr National Park. Our California condor team was ready to release four more birds into the Baja California mountain range and it was picture perfect ““ and that was a problem. Picture perfect means beautiful, but it is not ideal for releasing condors. The skies were too calm; without wind and thermals condors would not fly. There were already 10 endangered California condors free in this area. The Zoological Society of San Diego has been releasing condors in this Mexican national park since 2002. But on this day (Tuesday, July 19, 2005) none of them were flying, and it was already 10 a.m. when the team prepared to open the doors to the pen holding the four new condors, hatched and prepared for this day at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.
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Just a quick update to let everyone know that the Wolong panda breeding center is reporting that Hua Mei gave birth to twins yesterday, August 29! At this point we have no information about the sex of the cubs or how everyone is doing, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do.
Congratulations, Hua Mei!
Suzanne Hall is the panda research technician for the San Diego Zoo’s Office of Giant Panda Conservation.
View Bai Yun and her cub on Panda Cam
See our slideshow images of the second exam
See video of the cub’s second exam
Editor’s note: See an image of Hua Mei and one of her cubs on a translated version of the Wolong Panda Club Web site.
Our cub is nearly four weeks old now, and life around the panda station is slowly returning to normal. We used to have the cameras manned day and night, and we zoomed in every time so that we could get an accurate picture of the cub’s activity. We are no longer conducting round-the-clock observations of mom and cub, which explains why there are times when you might not see the camera zoom in when there is a peek at the cub.
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I can remember when the two pandas were gifted to America from China in 1972. We were so excited about these beautiful, mysterious animals, now part of the American culture at Washington, D.C. We watched with little understanding as the babies died and we cried for Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing. What was their problem? We now know there were health issues with the infants, even though Ling Ling was a very caring mother.
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I have been taking care of our pandas since the day they arrived from China in 1996. A lot has happened since that historic day when they arrived. Here we are on our third panda cub birth!
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Girl! I know our many panda fanatics have been waiting patiently for the news about the sex of our new little cub. Well, finally during today’s second exam, the veterinarians were able to confirm that the newest addition to our panda family is, in fact, a female.
Our veterinary staff had suspicions during the cub’s first exam last week but chose to wait one more week to get a second look as the cub continues to develop. Our new little female is growing quickly, gaining about 9 ounces (255 grams) per week. At already 3 weeks old, she is healthy and weighing in at almost 22 ounces (618 grams).
So spread the wonderful news: It’s a girl!
Pamela Crowe is a panda researcher for the Zoo’s Offices of Giant Panda Conservation.
View Bai Yun and her cub on Panda Cam
A few minutes ago one of our veterinarians (Dr. Geoff) completed the cub’s second exam. He was able to get a good long look at the cub because this little bear is amazingly quiet during exams. This long look at the cub will help them to conclusively determine its sex.
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We have collected a ton of behavioral data on the mother-infant relationship since the birth of this cub on 2 August. We can use this data to evaluate the activities of both mother and cub. Since we also did a bang-up job of recording data when Hua Mei was born in 1999 and again with Mei Sheng in 2003, we can use data from previous years to make a comparison of this cub to our previous ones.
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Bai Yun’s cub is three weeks old today. (And no, we still don’t know if it is a male or female!) If you have been watching the Panda Cam since the cub was born, you’ve probably noticed that the cub is more visible more often than it was in the first couple of weeks. Of course, one reason that the cub is more visible is because it is growing (we’ll know exactly how much tomorrow!). But another reason we are seeing more of the cub is because Bai Yun’s maternal behavior is changing.
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