Panda Cub Battling to Become 1st to Survive U.S. Zoo Birth

SAN DIEGO —  A victory the size of a stick of butter was won Saturday in the fight to save one of the world’s most imperiled species: the giant panda.

As nervous researchers from the San Diego Zoo watched over closed circuit television, the female panda Bai Yun gave birth to a tiny cub shortly before noon.

If the infant survives--and initial indications are good--it will become the first panda born in a U.S. zoo to survive beyond a few days. The San Diego Zoo has the only panda pair in the United States.

The sire, Shi Shi, was reportedly nonplussed, but San Diego researchers hailed the birth as a possible breakthrough in unlocking the mysteries of the panda’s reproduction system.

The two pandas came to the zoo in 1996 as part of a 12-year reproductive research loan from China. Plans are to keep mother and infant off public display until the nursing and dependency period ends in December.

As the number of pandas dwindles in their native China because of poaching and the loss of habitat, researchers are scrambling to prevent the extinction of the charismatic species.

“It’s been a culmination of a lot of work,” said Don Lindburg, the zoo’s panda team leader.

Although pandas have long been on zoo display, reproduction in captivity has proven spotty, for unknown reasons.

So eager are Chinese researchers to boost the panda population that they have given the impotence drug Viagra to males. Triplets were born in captivity a week ago, but one has since died.

In San Diego, researchers are monitoring mother and baby and are prepared to intervene if necessary. So far, Bai Yun has bonded well with the infant, Lindburg said. Bai Yun (White Cloud) was artificially inseminated three times in April with semen from Shi Shi (Rock).