On September 19, Saturday, veterinarians and a team at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington DC conducted a brief exam on the giant panda cub, whose birth was a month ago.
The panda cub was born on August 21, in a highly heralded event at the Washington zoo. It arrived 4 years after the last pregnancy of its mother Mei Xiang
Mei Xiang, who is 22 years old, was artificially inseminated on March 22 with the frozen semen of 23-hyear-old Tian Tian, another resident giant panda.
Since the two pandas’ arrival in 2000, Mei Xiang has given birth to 3 surviving cubs: males Tai Shan in 2005 and Bei Bei in 2015, and a female, Bao Bao, in 2013.
The 3 were returned to China on their fourth birthdays under a partnership contract in which China owns the pandas.
Under the US-China agreement, the National Zoo pays $500,000 per year towards panda conservation efforts in China. – Rappler.com
