National Zoo officials have shut down their panda exhibit, hoping that their star, Mei Xiang, is in a family way.
Zoo officials told The Examiner on Monday that Mei Xiang, a 10-year-old giant panda, has been “denning,” pulling bamboo to the quiet nooks of her cage, eating less and cradling food and other objects.
“For us, it’s part of the waiting game,” primates and pandas curator Lisa Stevens said.
Evolution has conspired against pandas and makes conception a touch-and-go matter.
“It’s difficult because female pandas only ovulate once a year,” she said.
Male pandas are, um, hard to motivate, too: The zoo attempted artificial insemination on Mei Xiang a few days ago.
To make matters trickier, pandas are often prone to pseudo-pregnancies. The hormone levels for a pseudo-pregnant panda and an actually pregnant panda are the same, Stevens said.
Authorities won’t know whether Mei Xiang is actually expecting until a few days before she gives birth, Stevens said.
About 2.5 million visitors come to the National Zoo every year to see its prized pandas. In July 2005, a baby panda named Tai Shan was born at the zoo and became an international celebrity.
Under a treaty, the National Zoo’s panda cubs are supposed to return to China.
Pandas were once on the brink of extinction but they have rallied, said Colby Loucks, deputy director of the World Wildlife Fund’s conservation science program.
“Pandas breeding in captivity are good for a variety of things,” he said. “They’re obviously incredible ambassadors.”
But “the critical thing” for the species is not the rare captivity breedings, Loucks said; it’s preserving what’s left of the panda’s habitat.
Where the panda once roamed across China and into Southeast Asia, it is now restricted to a few mountain ranges in western China. Panda’s bamboo-exclusive diet puts them on an evolutionary knife-edge.
“If you can preserve the habitat, maybe grow some bamboo, the pandas will come back,” Loucks said.
