Mei Xiang, a giant panda at the National Zoo in Washington, recently gave birth to twin cubs. She delivered the panda cubs just three days after zoo staff realized that she was pregnant.
The New York Times reported that the first birth happened on Aug. 22, at 5:34 p.m. The second birth happened later at 10:07 p.m. The first birth was broadcast live on the internet, but the second birth was unexpected. The zoo tweeted that the young pandas appeared healthy. Mei Xiang herself was reportedly doing well after delivering both cubs.
The delivery of the first panda cub was viewed by people online. After her water broke, Mei Xiang was laying on her back in a narrow cage. The cub came out 30 minutes later.
It was the first time that Mei Xiang delivered more than one cub at a time. She delivered one cub named BaoBao in 2013. BaoBao had a stillborn sibling that was delivered the following day. Mei Xiang has three cubs total that survived, namely Tai Shan which was born in 2005 and another cub that was delivered in 2012 but died shortly after birth.
According to the National Zoo, they did not know who the father of the cubs was. On Apr. 26 and 27, Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated with semen from both Hui Hui, a giant panda living at the China Conservation, and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan Province, and Tian Tian, a giant panda at the National Zoo.
According to the zoo, Mei Xiang will be spending the next two weeks inside her den to spend time with the cubs. Yahoo reported that the panda cubs will not be examined immediately by a veterinarian. It will also take some time before people can see the cubs in person. The gender of the pandas also remain unknown at the moment. In the meantime, people will have to rely on the zoo’s installed panda cameras, which offer footage online. Fans can download a zoo app to watch via the cameras.
“A cub by Mei Xiang and Hui Hui would be very genetically valuable, helping to preserve the genetic diversity of the panda population in human care,” the zoo stated on August 19, 2015.
The National Zoo is only one of four zoos in the country that has pandas. The animals were a loan from China and the new cubs are the only ones delivered in the United States in 2015.
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