At National Zoo, High Hopes for Panda Pregnancy
Scientists artificially inseminated Mei Xiang, 10, on Jan. 17.
(Ron Edmonds - Associated Press)
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Monday, May 4, 2009; 3:12 PM
Here we go again, panda fans. It's time for the annual panda pregnancy watch.
Scientists at the National Zoo will be closely watching female giant panda Mei Xiang's hormone levels this week to see whether she is pregnant.
The current decline in her hormone level indicates that her reproductive cycle is coming to a close, and she was put on 24-hour-a-day video pregnancy watch Saturday night. When the level of the hormone, progestin, drops to its baseline levels, the real nail-biting starts. Either the panda will deliver a tiny cub within a few days, or the zoo will declare a "false pregnancy."
But, wow, in these dire days of swine flu and the sickening economy, wouldn't a panda cub be sweet news in the nation's capital?
The Panda House is closed until further notice, although zoo-goers can see the two male pandas outdoors from early morning until midafternoon every day.
Scientists artificially inseminated Mei Xiang, 10, with semen from the zoo's male giant panda Tian Tian, 11, on Jan. 17, after they realized that she had come into heat three months earlier than usual.
Since then, the zoo has conducted weekly and biweekly hormonal tests, using daily urine samples from Mei Xiang. Veterinarians are also doing biweekly ultrasounds to look for evidence of a fetus. So far, they have not seen anything, although panda fetuses do not start developing until the last weeks of a gestation period.
It is still too early to tell whether Mei Xiang is actually pregnant or having a false pregnancy, which is common in pandas. In 2005, in the last weeks leading up to the birth of Mei Xiang's only cub, Tai Shan, she would not cooperate for her ultrasounds and it was not possible to definitively determine whether she was pregnant. Over the weekend, she did cooperate with the ultrasound procedure, which may or may not mean anything.
This is the eighth year the zoo has tried to breed Mei Xiang. There was a false pregnancy last year, and one the year before, and attempts to make her pregnant also failed in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Each one is heartbreaking for the zoo staff.
