A panda frenzy may – or may not – descend upon Washington next month.
Scientists at the National Zoo found a spike in hormone levels in Mei Xiang, the zoo’s female giant panda, that could mean she’s carrying the region’s next baby panda.
But since the bamboo-munching mammals commonly have false pregnancies that are virtually indistinguishable from real ones until the last weeks before giving birth, scientists are hopeful, but not certain, that Mei Xiang is with cub.
If she is, she likely would give birth in mid- or late July, scientists said. Mei Xiang had false pregnancies in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007.
In 2005, she gave birth to her first cub, Tai Shan, after scientists artificially inseminated her with fresh semen from the zoo’s male giant panda, Tian Tian.
Zoo specialists unsuccessfully inseminated Mei Xiang in 2007 using frozen semen, and tried again in March using fresh semen taken from an anesthetized Tai Shan after his mating attempts failed.
“He stood on her, he came at the wrongangle,” zoo reproduction specialist Jo Gayle Howard said. “He just doesn’t quite get it right.”
Pandas are notoriously incompetent breeders – a matter helped little by the female panda’s mating window of 48 hours a year.
Scientists will continue to monitor Mei Xiang and will soon begin administering ultrasounds to try to spot a developing fetus, which can be seen only in the last weeks of a panda’s pregnancy.
The zoo’s scientists still had not determined whether the now eight-year-old panda was pregnant when she surprisingly gave birth to a miniscule Tai Shan three years ago.
“She’s been trained to come into a waiting area to do an ultrasound once a week,” Howard said. “In 2005, she got really finicky toward the end – she had an attitude and was cranky and sleepy and didn’t want to come in. That’s why we didn’t know.”
Baby Tai Shan was dubbed “Butterstick” after scientists described him at birth as being approximately the size of a stick of butter.
The cute cub – the first one successfully bred at the National Zoo — sparked an avalanche of media coverage and drew thousands of visitors.
At his first examination about a month after he was born, he weighed 1.8 pounds and was one foot long.
He stayed indoors with his mother for the first five months of his life, visible to visitors only on the zoo’s Panda-cam.
“Mei Xiang stayed with that cub around the clock for several weeks,” Howard said. “She did not put that cub down, she didn’t eat – she’s a great mom.”
Tai Shan, who was born in July 2005, made his first public outdoor appearance in December of that year.
