WASHINGTON — The National Zoo has announced that the most recent, surviving offspring of its panda parents, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, is male.
The zoo announced Friday that the surviving panda cub is male and the son of the zoo’s male panda Tian Tian. Mei Xiang gave birth to fraternal twins Saturday, but the smaller cub — also a male fathered by Tian Tian — died Wednesday.
The surviving cub appears to be healthy and is gaining weight under his mother’s care, said Associate Director for Animal Care Sciences Brandie Smith. The cub’s weight increased about 16 percent in the past two days.
“We hear those big, squawking lungs, and we’re pretty sure that it’s doing well,” Smith said. “Also, the best way to describe it now is plump. You can see its fat little belly when it’s on mom. So we know that it’s drinking milk. We know that it’s doing well.”
Reproductive biologist Pierre Comizzoli said there was no preference for a male or female cub in adding to the panda population.
Pink, hairless and blind, newborn cubs weigh 3 to 5 ounces at birth. Mei Xiang weighs more than 700 times as much.
Tian Tian is the father of Mei Xiang’s other cubs, daughter Bao Bao and son Tai Shan. During this year’s panda breeding, Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated with semen from Tian Tian and a panda in China named Hui Hui that was deemed a good genetic match.
The most likely cause of death for the smaller cub on Wednesday was complications from food getting into its respiratory system, resulting in the development of pneumonia, officials said.