As I am sure you can imagine, life has been a lot different at Lion Camp at the Wild Animal Park since the newest additions made their appearance (see previous blog, Quick Lion Cub Update). All seven cubs are doing great! They are little piglets and are without a doubt the roundest lions I have ever seen! The cubs are fast becoming mobile and are no longer spending the majority of their time in the dens but are instead exploring the house, under a watchful eye from their mothers, of course! Oshana’s cubs, being four days older, are a little more precocious, but Mina’s are developing quickly. Soon I am sure there will be no distinguishable difference between the two litters.
(more…)

Giant panda Mei Sheng moved to Wolong, China on November 5, 2007. Lisa Bryant of the San Diego Zoo accompanied him on his journey and is sharing the trip with us through blog installments. See Lisa’s previous blog, Mei Sheng’s First Night in China.

Hi, everyone. I last wrote about Mei Sheng’s overnight stay in Shanghai where we witnessed him go from demure, sweet boy panda to a big boy panda. After we had gotten Mei Sheng all settled in for the night, Dr. Desheng and the Chinese keepers asked for our assistance in getting Sheng ready for the last leg of his trip. We needed to leave our overnight accommodations in Shanghai and fly to Chengdu in the morning. We were flying commercially and our plane was sizeable but smaller than the cargo plane we’d started on. What that meant was a crate change for Sheng. As you can imagine, it had to be a smaller crate than he had traveled in this far. Would he go willingly? was all I thought about for those 4 to 5 hours of sleep. (more…)

Windows Media version | Quicktime version

At last, cub #4 has a name: Zhen Zhen, meaning “precious” in the Mandarin dialect (look below for the Chinese characters for her name). We want to thank everyone who participated in the naming process, from the 2,400 names submitted by San Diego Zoo visitors to the online naming poll available to panda lovers worldwide to determine the winning name from four choices. Our poll generated over 50,000 votes, with Zhen Zhen receiving 36 percent of the vote. The official name was unveiled today during a special panda naming ceremony held at the Zoo’s Hunte Amphitheater. See video link at the top of this paragraph. (more…)

Giant panda Mei Sheng moved to Wolong, China on November 5, 2007. Lisa Bryant of the San Diego Zoo accompanied him on his journey and is sharing the trip with us through blog installments. See Lisa’s previous blog, Mei Sheng, Our Precious Cargo.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I was so surprised to hear from so many panda fans. I consider myself a bit of a “compu-phobe.” That is, I do what I need to on the computer: nothing more, nothing less. I was touched to know our pandas have such a genuine following in all of you. It was great to know how many well wishes for a safe and uneventful trip were sent our way. Thank you.
(more…)

Giant panda Mei Sheng moved to Wolong, China on November 5, 2007. Lisa Bryant of the San Diego Zoo accompanied him on his journey and is sharing the trip with us through blog installments.

I’m back, everyone. It’s me, Lisa Bryant, team area lead for Sun Bear Forest, Polar Bear Plunge, and (what I’m really here to talk about!) the Giant Panda Research Station at the San Diego Zoo. As you all know, on November 5 we transported our 4-year-old panda, Mei Sheng, to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, Wolong Nature Reserve. His older half-sister, Hua Mei, already resides there and has been quite prolific since her arrival. However, Mei Sheng, being a slightly more sensitive animal, gave many pause about how he’d handle the trip. I’m here to tell you that he traveled like a champ! All the hard work that the keeper staff put into his preparation really paid off.
(more…)

If you have ever stopped by Elephant Mesa at the San Diego Zoo, you have surely spent some time watching our playful meerkats. There is always something going on in their exhibit. We have a group of eight: four adults and four juveniles.

Meerkat society is quite complicated. There is a dominant female that is the only one breeding and having babies. Sometimes one of the subordinate females will also get pregnant, but usually her babies do not survive. We have dominant female Ngami, the male Ghanzi, and two subordinate females named Seronga and Kasane. They arrived from South Dakota over a year ago and have been digging ever since.
(more…)

Today was a special occasion – the seven (yes, all seven!) lion cubs were briefly handled for the first time (see Marcia’s previous blog, Baby Boom at Lion Camp!!). Both moms, Oshana and Mina, were given a yummy treat in the rooms next to their maternity dens while the cubs were quickly and quietly checked out. Oddly, Oshana was more relaxed about this than Mina, which is exactly opposite of their last litters. This time, Mina was the one that anxiously inspected her three when reunited with them; Oshana was pretty relaxed about the whole thing.

We are proud to announce that Oshana has two males and two females; Mina has one male and two females. An excellent ratio! Now that we know the sexes, we have to start thinking about names! What a happy task!

Marcia Redding is a senior keeper at the Wild Animal Park.

The San Diego Zoo has the largest population of giant pandas in the U.S., even with the recent return of Mei Sheng to China. With four animals on site, we are fortunate to be surrounded by these amazing creatures. Sometimes it can be hard to imagine that they are ambassadors of a species in peril. But they are the most endangered bear species in the world.
(more…)

Now that Mei Sheng is on to new adventures, I thought some of you might be wondering how Su Lin is doing these days. Well, big sister is doing great! She has been shifted over to the left exhibit area to make room for Gao Gao, who is now residing in the right exhibit. Some of you may recall that Su Lin spent quite a bit of time in this left exhibit with Bai Yun when she was younger; therefore, I’m sure she feels right at home there.
(more…)

Here’s the news all you lion fans have been waiting for! On Friday, November 2, Oshana went into labor. We were pretty sure she would have a large litter: she became much bigger with this pregnancy than her previous one, when she gave birth to Abena and Bakari. Over a period of several hours, she delivered a grand total of four cubs, all of who look beautiful and healthy. Understandably, she was very tired afterward, but cleaned up all the babies like a pro. Soon they were lined up nursing; lions have four teats, just the right number for the new family. As of now, we are observing the family through cameras only, to avoid disturbing them. Although the images are pretty clear, it’s still too soon to identify the sex of the cubs. They are 10 days old, yet the cubs already look bigger and more filled out than on their birthday. When they nurse, you can actually see their bellies expand!
(more…)