Astonishing Baby Pandas and Births
Welcome back!
In celebration of the birth and life of one of the most adorable and endangered species our planet has to offer, here are a series of progressive photos of a Giant Panda — native only to China — from day 1 through to day 120, along with information about panda reproduction that you may find surprising.
1 week old at Chengdu’s Giant Panda Breeding Research Base
The photo above is from the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Chengdu, China. Those that follow were emailed to me without credit, history or any attached information. After hours of research to find their origin I came up empty, but one might be safe to assume that the photos were taken either at the Chengdu Research Base or the Wolong Panda Reserve where they would be professionally equipped and staffed with qualified handlers to ensure a panda’s survival.
Why this little infant was raised from an incubator is anyone’s guess, but plenty of explanations abound …
If the mother has twins — which happens in at least 40% of captive births — she is able to care for only one of her cubs, and will reject the second.
The mother may have died at the hands of a poacher, although it would be unlikely in this case considering the age of the cub.
The mother may have been ill during birth and unable to care for her young. Baby pandas are born very small, helpless and as fragile as a human baby at birth, requiring the mother’s undivided attention.
Some panda mothers do accidentally kill their cubs since they’re so large and a little clumsy, while others lack the instinct in captivity to care for their infants. As a result, zoos and reserves have intervened to raise them for a time to ensure their safety and guarantee their development.
Ya Ya of China’s Chongqing Zoo shown above accidentally rolled over onto her newborn, killing the cub in September 2006. Ya Ya hadn’t slept for 2 days and fell asleep while it was nursing, China’s media reported. When she rolled onto her cub, she fatally damaged the infant’s heart, liver, and other internal organs. Handlers were alerted to the tragedy when the cub fell motionless from her mother’s nipple. Many zoos state this is not uncommon.
“There’s a level of risk in the early hours and early days after a birth. And with a first-time or inexperienced mother, the risk is much higher.” Said Carmi Penny, curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo.
Females and males are only fertile during a 24 to 72 hour window every 2 to 3 years, so 2 pandas must be brought together at exactly the right time. Sometimes the fertility is only for a 60 minute period of time.
On average, a giant panda may have 2 to 3 cubs in their lifetime. The cub’s growth is slow, not reaching sexual maturity until 5 to 7 years of age. The mating season typically occurs from mid-March to mid-May.
Gestation ranges from 83 to 163 days — 135 days being the average. Baby pandas weigh merely 3.2 to 4.6 ounces (90 to 130 grams). Usually, the panda generally gives birth to 1 or 2 cubs. Since the baby requires the mother’s full attention, she usually abandons one of her cubs if she has twins, which dies soon after birth. Currently, scientists do not know how the female chooses which cub to raise.
Cubs are born pink, furless and blind. They nurse 6 to 14 times a day for up to 30 minutes at a time. The cub’s skin turns gray where its hair will eventually become black 1 to 2 weeks after birth. A slight pink color may appear on the panda’s fur, as a result of a chemical reaction between the fur and its mother’s saliva. The color pattern of the cub’s fur is fully developed 1 month after birth. Their fur is very soft and coarsens with age.
The cub begins to crawl at 75 to 90 days. Mothers often play with their cubs by rolling and wrestling with them. The cubs are able to eat small quantities of bamboo after 6 months, though the mother’s milk remains the primary food source for most of the first year. The mother may leave the den to feed for 3 to 4 hours, leaving the panda cub defenseless.
Giant panda cubs weigh about 99 pounds (45 kilos) at one year, and live with their mothers until they are 18 months to 2 years old. The interval between births in the wild is generally 2 years, as mothers will not mate while they have an infant to care for.
Breeders and biologists often experience difficulty inducing captive pandas to mate, which may stem from the captive bears’ lack of experience. Some keepers in China and Thailand have shown their pandas videos of ‘panda porn’ — footage with mating pandas in an attempt to teach them to mate. A number have been successful, even resulting in reproduction. Although it’s unlikely the pandas actually learn mating behaviors from the videos, scientists believe that hearing the associated sounds has a stimulating effect on them.
Panda pornography refers to pornographic movies created to promote sexual arousal in captive Giant Pandas. Under zoo conditions, the bears have generally been unenthusiastic about mating, placing their species in danger of extinction. 31 cubs were born in China over a 10 month period proceeding the experiment. Other methods, including the use of Viagra to stimulate pandas have so far proven unsuccessful.
Wild panda breeding is difficult to study, as the animals are so reclusive. But long-term data on some populations suggest wild pandas have relatively high reproductive rates.
Photo BBC / AP
The first panda in Europe to be conceived naturally by parents in captivity was born in Austria on April 27th 2007. Female Yang Yang and male Long Hui produced the cub, which measured 4 inches (10 centimeters) and weighed 3.57 ounces (100 grams) at birth. The 7 year old pair were loaned by China to the zoo in Vienna in 2003.
Handlers said that an ultrasound on August 6th had shown no evidence that Yang Yang — whose name means sunshine — was pregnant. The arrival of the cub was discovered after unusual noises were heard coming from the panda’s enclosure.
Most pandas conceived in captivity are the product of artificial insemination but Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Zoo said it wanted “to let nature run its course.”
The recent success of captive breeding is yet another feather in the cap of giant panda conservation. Reproductive biologists spent years watching pandas with no sex drive just stare at each other across a pen. Or worse, male pandas would attempt to mount a female’s head, says Jo Gayle Howard, a reproductive biologist at the National Zoo in Washington. After a decade of intensive collaboration with the Chinese on reproductive technology, Howard said “It just finally paid off. The Chinese have been role models in breeding pandas. We’ve learned a lot from them and they’ve learned a lot from us.”
Most difficult was pinning down when female pandas ovulate. Howard and her team at the National Zoo watched their female’s flirtatious behavior and used hormones in the urine to pinpoint the best opportunity for artificial insemination. Chinese scientists often rely on male bears to sniff out the fertile window. Once the bears copulate, the team injects a back-up dose of artificial insemination.
To help prevent extinction, humans have had to lend a helping hand often using artificial insemination and hand rearing. Pandas have to be mutually interested if they are to mate without artificial insemination
In 1983, the Madrid zoo saw the birth of Chu Lin, the first Panda cub to be born using artificial insemination in Europe. Chu Lin lived for 13 years.
Human pregnancies can be revealed by ultrasound, the telltale expanded belly, and home-pregnancy tests, but panda pregnancies are highly difficult to detect. None of these work for pandas. They won’t generally sit still for ultrasounds, their babies are born too small — the size of a stick of butter — to create any noticeable belly, and their pregnancy hormones remain a mystery.
Researchers trying to discover a pattern to the hormones typical to a panda’s pregnancy have few examples to draw from with only 239 pandas as of November 7th 2007 that live in zoos around the world, and few born in captivity. The few found patterns indicate that a pregnant panda’s urine hormones track exactly to a non-pregnant panda’s, except for a 4 or 5 day period about 30 days prior to delivery.
The change in hormones is thought to correspond to the implantation of the panda fetus, equally mysterious. Researchers believe this phenomenon — called variable delayed implantation — means that the embryo floats freely in the uterus until conditions for a successful birth are favorable, and the fetus implants in the wall of the uterus late in the 3 to 5 month pregnancy. A human embryo implants within days of fertilization.
Lee Hagey has developed a new method to monitor levels of chemicals in a pandas’ urine with a machine that separates chemicals in the urine according to weight, and gives a computerized profile of the amounts of each chemical in the sample. Researchers are also focusing on a new set of steroid hormones as possible markers of pregnancy. Hagey is hopeful that together, these will prove to be a more reliable technique than prior methods.
Photo BBC / AFP
One of the busiest centers of panda breeding is the Wolong Nature Reserve in southwestern China, where handlers aided a record number of births last year in a mini baby panda boom.
Photo BBC / AFP
Eighteen pandas were named at a ceremony in Sichuan province after names for the cubs were chosen from about 30,000 entries submitted by the public after an appeal for ideas.
Photo BBC / AFP
The cubs will live at the reserve until they’re a year old.
Giant pandas are an endangered species, threatened by continued habitat loss and by a very low birthrate, both in the wild and in captivity.
China has 239 giant pandas in captivity as of November 2007, 128 of them in Wolong and 67 in Chengdu, with 27 pandas living outside the country. It’s estimated that around 1,590 pandas are living in the wild, but recent research via DNA analysis suggests that up to 3,000 pandas could be roaming the wilderness.
Scientists thought giant pandas live mostly solitary lives mainly coming together to mate, but recent studies paint a different picture, in which small groups of pandas share a large territory and sometimes meet outside the breeding season.
A Baby Panda is Born !!!
Includes many of the pictures above, plus a couple of additions.
Panda Babies Playing on Slide
Panda Babies
Panda Babies Playing in Snow
Cute Panda Babies
The Wolong Panda Reserve began with only 10 pandas. As a result of their successful breeding methods, they were up to 102. In 2006, 18 baby pandas were born —
a new record.
Baby Pandas’ Milk Time
Baby pandas at Chengdu, China.
Sources: ScienCentral, BBC, Inkling Magazine, and Wikipedia
Thanks to Kuanyin of Blog-Blond for sending the photos of the infant panda!
Related stories:
Pandas Send-off to Spain from Chengdu Research Base
Hug a Panda
Hi Deborah,
Wow, there are some absolutely amazing pics there and they are so tiny….fascinating post
amazing work Deb! Nice job! Thanks for the interesting reporting!
Very cute pictures, and a great story – looks like it is straight off the Discovery Channel – however the very top ones, when the panda was first born, is it just me or do they look like little rats? Eeeeeeeee, nasty! But, as you scroll down and see the cuter pictures, that saves the story – LOL
They sure are cute little creatures.
Thanks Colin
I find it quite incredible that they begin so small considering their size as adults.
Thanks K Stone, glad you enjoyed it
Thanks Lazy Boy
Haha, I think they’re so unattractive at birth that they’re actually cute.
They certainly are Angela
They look so cute when they’re little. Who would ever thought they’d grow up to be such giants,, adorable giants at that.
Giant Pandas are cute but deadly. An adult panda is strong enough to rip the face off a human being as an afterthought.
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Those pics are amazing! The videos are so funny, especially the ones showing the slides.
Thanks for another wonderful post which you’ve so painstakingly researched and put up! Great work!
Charge a fee for the public to watch pandas online via high def cameras. That would generate over a billion dollars per year in revenue. Use the money for panda preservation.
It is quite surprising to think something so small would grow to be such a large creature Djahna.
People can become a little complacent with pandas, being that they’re so adorable Mrogi. As a rule, they’re rather passive, but they have been known to bite when they’ve felt threatened, such as a boy that entered their cage at a zoo not very long ago.
I really enjoyed the videos Betshopboy, they’re so much fun to watch, especially as infants. Thanks for your kind words, it was fun to write about them
That’s an interesting idea Mrogi! Pandas are lent out to zoos which they often charge a handsome fee for, in order to help maintain their reserves for breeding etc. I doubt they’ve thought of that
Hideous creatures. Don’t you have any nice pictures of hyenas or baboons instead?
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It was a cute over-load for me. The darn pandas were so cute that I actually felt human emotions for the 1st time but it made my heart beat out of whack. I am giving orders for a war on pandas.
Cute overload? Too funny Dick
Sorry about the heart beat thing 
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They are so cute. Really amazing stories. I love Pandas.
Regards Andy
Thanks Andy, they’re one of my favorite creatures
Isn’t nature wonderful…
Yeah they are cute, but I Still think natural selection should be allowed to run its course. Who are we to decide which creature deserves to live? There are too many people who think we are god, instead of leaving things up to God
Awww, would you rather let these poor and rare baby pandas to die without the aid of those who can actually save them from certain death Gennale? At times like these, it can be a very good thing for mankind to step in.
I really like the pandas!
they make this the best website ever!! Send me lots of emails me please!
Thanks Dunder, I’m glad you enjoyed the story. Pandas are one of my favorites as well
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=27vQabSmZ4k
What an adorable video! Thanks for sharing
OMG! They are just CUTE!!!! So lovely baby! Thank you for sharing that!
They certainly melt a person’s heart, Happy
aww!! I absolutely LOVE pandas so much. i loved the baby pictures of them
Pandas are my absolute favourite animal in the whole and i have loved them all my life.
Its my dream to work with them but im not really sure how to make my dream come true. Any tips?
Thank you sooo much for all da lovely pictures they are just soooo sweet!!!
I love them loads.
Thanks
Ciara and Mima, sorry for the late response, I’ve been sick recently. Mima, if it’s your heart’s desire to work with pandas, I’d suggest looking into the WWF site, and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is located in the west of Sichuan Province in China.
The latter could be very difficult to get a job at considering it’s in China, but you might want to even look into volunteering at a zoo that’s had some donated?
They are truly adorable, and one of my favorite creatures as well
i love pandas soooo much!
Its sad that due to habitat loss, they’ll never be able to flourish like they used to
They’re indeed a great treasure to us all, Sara
Very sad, Julz. It’s difficult enough as it is that they’re only fertile once a year, and sometimes only for a matter of hours!
They are so cute. Really amazing! Thank you for sharing.
I just love all fur babies! They make my heart sing. Great post, Girly! You know that I’m smiling big right now.
Hugs to you and Mr Fastlane.
OMG they’re SO CUTE!!! Yes, sometimes I am an 11-year-old girl. That’s fine. … so, Please can I take them home with me!??
There is never enough Cute Overload for me! The photo of the Mother with the baby in her mouth touches my heart! Great job as always and mahalo nui loa for your thorough post!
They’re utterly adorable, Rob, thanks
Awww, thanks Mary Ann, and right back achya
Hehehe, don’t they just melt your heart, Freelance
So true, Kuanyin, there’s never enough Cute Overload,’ and thanks so much, as always
They are amazing animals. I thought the problems with reproduction were related to being in captivity and did not realize that it is naturally so difficult. Interesting post, Deborah, thank you.
the pictures were awsome!
Glad you enjoyed it, Morgan
ohh….they are so cute..
finally a site with good footige thankyou!
the information really helped my project thanks.
x
OMG the pandas are sooooooooo cute thanx for making youtube videos of them!!:)
Glad you enjoyed it Katie, but the videos are actually from YouTube
I was doing a little panda research and came across your site via google. It is amazing. The pandas, big and little, are so adorable. A couple of the photos made me laugh out loud! Too cute! Thanks for sharing! Made my day!
Pandas are one of the most adorable creatures that Mother Nature has given us, Candy. Glad you found your way here to enjoy them
i love the pics of the pandas they are so cute but one other side of my comment is that i think its a bit cruel keeping them in those little cages for their lives!
[sad face]
I don’t believe that they live their entire lives in these small cages, Emily. They’re more likely let out to the natural environment at reserve parks once they’re stable where much of these types of life-saving procedures are carried out.
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we love panda
i love pandas do you love pandas
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how cute these pandas are thanks this really helped me out on my reseaurch paper
Great that it was able to help you out in some way, Jeylenien
Oh my gosh those picturs are soo cute! I was reading somewhere (I think it was reuters) that some pandas were killed in the recent earthquake in asia. Does anyone know if this actually seriously effected the proccess of bring the panda population back up?
Meraviglioso, tenero e dolcissimo =
Wonderful, tender and sweet!
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Very Very cute!
Nice BLOG. To help prevent extinction, humans have had to lend a helping hand often using artificial insemination and hand rearing. Pandas have to be mutually interested if they are to mate without artificial insemination.
Definitely, and when the females are only fertile for one day of the year, and sometimes for only several hours at that, it’s no small wonder that they are so endangered.
che belli che sonoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
I’m always looking for good tastes and this blog is an inspiration.
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[...] Astonishing Baby Pandas and Births [w/Pics and Video] [...]
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Please, can you PM me and tell me few more thinks about this, I am really fan of your blog…gets solved properly asap.
This panda is so sweet and was so little!!!Amazing.
wowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowow!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that was amazing when i gey out of my parents house i am gunna get a panda cus i am a panda lover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They are so gorgeous and I cant believe how small they start off. I saw a 2 year old panda in Hong Kong a couple of years ago and boy do they grow fast.
I hope they decorate the place they sleep and not just the boring 4 grey walls that we’re use to seeing in so many zoo’s around the world.
Baby Nursery Decoration
.-= Corinne´s last blog ..Baby Room Ideas – Noah’s Ark Nursery Theme =-.
They are so gorgeous and I cant believe how small they start off. I saw a 2 year old panda in Hong Kong a couple of years ago and boy do they grow fast.
I hope they decorate the place they sleep and not just the boring 4 grey walls that we’re use to seeing in so many zoo’s around the world.
Baby Nursery Decoration
ommmg !! i love baby pandas , especially after i went to buildabear and got a panda animal =)) <3
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Awesome
Very cute pandas
.-= Nafa´s last blog ..Food Immunity Booster =-.
i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.i want a panda.
great job! thanks to Deborah. BTW, i am from china.
Really I`m taidam
They are so cute. Really amazing stories. I love Pandas.
Those little panda babies are like smiling all the time
i love you pandas
I love Pandas too. Thanks for all pictures
This are the best panda pictures.. the baby is so cute..
These are wonderful pictures! Baby pandas are just adorable!
Such cute pictures! I think seeing those tiny babies just made my day!
Absolutely adorable!