It’s summertime and things are warming up in Ituri Forest at the San Diego Zoo! With the heat index rising, keepers are challenged to find ways to keep the animals cool and comfortable. Often times, things that we enjoy doing to cool off are also enjoyed by our animals!
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After fasting for nine days since the birth, giant panda Bai Yun has begun to eat small quantities of bamboo. She first came out to eat about 3:30 p.m. today, and only for a few brief minutes. In the five hours that followed, she came out for bamboo feedings four additional times, for a combined total of about 16 minutes spent feeding. The keeper staff has fortified her sun room with 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of fresh bamboo so that she can continue to fill her belly overnight.
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Today the black ears and saddle of our little panda cub are a little darker, and even the eye patches are becoming more evident. To my eye, it seems the back legs are not darkening as quickly as the rest of the black patches, but in time they will surely catch up.
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Our new panda cub is now a week old and it has changed so much already. One of the most striking changes that we see during the first few weeks of life is the development of the pandas’ trademark black-and-white coloring on the skin. Well, at about 12:30 p.m. today we got a great view of the cub nestled calmly in the crook of Bai Yun’s neck and there they were: the first signs of the black ears, eye-patches, and limbs! Look closely at the cub the next time Bai Yun gives us a peek. The black coloring should intensify dramatically over the coming week.

Stay tuned!

Megan Owen is the research coordinator with the Giant Panda Unit of Applied Animal Ecology/San Diego Zoo.

If you have gotten a glimpse of the panda cub today, you may have noticed something: the black saddle and ear patches are beginning to emerge. This occurs at about the 7- to 14-day mark, so our little cub is right on schedule. Over the course of the next few days, these patches will darken, and the cub will take on the appearance of a more typical panda, in miniature. The hair on the cub is still sparse and predominantly white. The black markings in development are actually pigmentation changes of the skin itself.
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The Children’s Zoo keepers and I have been tasked with the awesome job of having to train little Isa, the male fossa pup in our nursery (see previous blog, Fossa Pup Picks Up Speed). We began visits with him when he was about five weeks old. The first visits were similar to holding a new human baby who is so uncoordinated and helpless. We wanted to start early with Isa to increase the bonding potential. As far as we know, no one has every used a fossa in educational programs and we want to set ourselves up to succeed. There are 47 fossas in managed care facilities, so the likeliness that he will need to go off some day and breed is high. But we want to teach the world about fossas as much as we can. (An adult female fossa is pictured below.)
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While we sit and watch Bai Yun during this postpartum period, the San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Conservation Unit behavior staff has many tasks to complete. For starters, we are collecting detailed behavioral data on the goings-on in the den. Our stopwatch is set to a 60-second countdown repeat, and each time it beeps at us we record a suite of information: the behavior and location of the dam, the behavior and location of the cub, the degree of exposure of the cub to the ambient environment, the amount and type of contact between infant and dam, and whether and how the cub is vocalizing. In between watch beeps, we record details on events such as nursing and grooming bouts.
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I am reminded of those car ads that advertise “0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds” when I think of the baby fossa’s development recently (see Janet’s previous blog, Fossa Pup Update). Our little guy, now named Isa, a Malagasy word for the number one, is making up for lost time. As Isa’s weight gains continue to inch upward daily, his locomotor development has launched into a full-tilt climb.
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August 7, 9:45 p.m.
Not much change inside the den today. Bai Yun must have had her fill of water yesterday during her four den departures, because she remained sequestered inside the den for about 23 consecutive hours since that last trip out. She finally came out again about 6:15 and 9:30 tonight, again to drink.
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Today Bai Yun started leaving the den. As of this writing, she has left the cub four times to get a quick drink in her nearby bedroom. As intense as it is to care for a newborn panda, it is important for any new mother to take care of herself as well, so these quick trips outside the den are quite normal for this stage of the postpartum period. With Su Lin, she drank on day +2 postpartum, and with Mei Sheng it was day +3. She is pretty much right on schedule.
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