Panda Twins—Oh Boy! Oh Girl? “We’re Not Sure.”
The birth of not one but two pandas has increased the excitement at Washington’s National Zoo. But keeping them both alive will be tricky.
Laurie Thompson, the giant panda biologist at the Smithsonian National Zoo, was sitting at her desk last night when it happened, at 10:07 pm. She had already had a good day: Less than five hours earlier, Mei Xiang, the zoo’s 17-year-old female panda, had given birth to what appeared to be a healthy cub—bringing to a happy end an anxious wait that had begun with an artificial insemination in April. (See “Is Breeding Pandas in Captivity Worth It?”)
Then a noise came from the panda cam on Thompson’s computer—”a similar sound as earlier, a grunting sound,” Thompson said. “I looked at the camera, and out popped a cub.”
Mei Xiang, already a mother of two, has had twins.
