WP: Exam Finds Thriving National Zoo Panda Cub (pic!)

[DeepModem Mom]

Exam Finds a Thriving Panda Cub
Keepers Dash In for Quick Inspection as Mother Leaves Den for Breakfast



By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; Page B01


The moment the zookeepers had been waiting for came yesterday when Mei Xiang left her cub for a leisurely breakfast in the next room.

"The door is closed," Lisa M. Stevens, the National Zoo's assistant curator, said in a phone call summoning the zoo's veterinarian.

With that, Stevens and keeper Laurie Perry swooped in and snatched up the baby panda long enough to determine that it is male and weighed 1.82 pounds. By the time Mei Xiang waddled back to the cub, somewhat anxiously, after a bamboo meal, a drink of water and a bathroom break, her newborn was back where she had left it.

The examination, which Associate Veterinarian Sharon L. Deem joined, took only nine minutes. It was the first time since the cub's birth July 9 that any person had handled it or seen it up close. Until then, the rare creature could be viewed only through cameras in the den that also are connected to the Internet....

***

Stevens and Deem said they needed to examine the cub to make sure it had no health problems and to add the statistics to data being collected worldwide about captive panda development in hopes of improving their endangered status in the wild. Pandas are celebrity entertainers for zoos, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits them in this country only if they are part of a research program. Mei Xiang and her mate, Tian Tian, came to the zoo in 2000 on a 10-year loan from China, in exchange for $10 million in privately raised funds that underwrite conservation programs in that country....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201013.html

[Triana]

1. Awwr! It's so cute!

*swoooooooooooooooon!*

:)

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Sorry, I have to say it, too -- what a cutie!!!

[SoCalDem]

3. Slide show here.. such a cutie pie

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/sm/events/sc/071805pandabears/