DEL.ICIO.USPanda Lun Lun, possibly pregnant, gets the royal treatment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, August 25, 2008
It’s 10 a.m. and giant panda Lun Lun is asleep.
Sprawled in a corner in one of three 10-foot by 10-foot concrete holding spaces at her disposal, she flinches periodically as she lays against the softness of leaves from a forgotten bamboo stalk that been left for her breakfast.
Renne Hannans Henry/AJC
Officials are literally tip-toeing around Lun Lun because the 230-pound panda may be pregnant. If so, the zoo wants to create as comfortable an environment as possible to ensure a healthy birth.
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Zoo Atlanta’s favorite mom slumbers happily. The temperature has been set at a pleasant, consistent 75 degrees. There are no children squealing with delight at her every move. It’s as quiet as a school library during summer vacation.
“We make sure there is no noise,” said Megan Wilson, the zoo’s assistant curator of carnivores. Lun Lun will make a moaning, honking sound when she’s being disturbed by noise. “They are very sensitive to sound.”
Officials are literally tip-toeing around Lun Lun because the 230-pound panda may be pregnant. If so, the zoo wants to create as comfortable an environment as possible to ensure a healthy birth.
Whether Lun Lun is pregnant won’t be known until she gives birth, which officials think will happen in the next week if she is. Panda pregnancies are hard to determine because the fetus is extremely small and blocked by large and often full intestines, making it difficult to see.
Pandas also often have psuedo-pregnancies, a condition where their behaviors — like lethargy and big decrease in appetite — suggest they are expecting when they actually are not.
Nonetheless, Zoo Atlanta is treating Lun Lun like a mother close to giving birth.
This past Friday, in the most recent update on the zoo’s online panda watch, Joseph Svoke, a giant panda keeper wrote: “Basically all she’s willing to eat is sugarcane, banana (without the peel) and a few handsful of bamboo leaves. This is something that we want to see as she gets closer to a potential birth, as food intake becomes less of a priority.
“Unfortunately,” he continued “this means she is also less likely to come close to us so that we can check the status of any physical changes she might be experiencing, which also means ultrasound is out of the question. We just have to take the opportunity to check her out if she decides to lie in a position that lets us see her vulva. This most likely means it would be at a distance, and sometimes is hard to accurately judge.”
In the wild, a pregnant panda would find a cave or a hollowed-out tree as the birthing den, said Jinping Yu, director of China conservation and education for the zoo. The opening would be incredibly tight — Yu, who is slim, said he could barely squeeze into some dens he’s visited in China — to keep out predators. And it would serve as home, feeding room and bathroom.
Lun Lun has a choice of where to give birth, he said. Her three holding spaces are connected with bear-sized entries, which allow her to determine which is most appropriate. Officials can enclose the space with a board to further create the feeling on an enclosure and safety for her. The space is also cleaned daily.
The panda could use the bamboo leaves or hay to create a space on which to have a cub, or she may have it on the concrete floor as she did when she gave birth to Mei Lan in 2006.
“We are trying to balance her needs to be in an enclosed space with the access we need,” Yu said.
If she goes into labor, it will be noticeable, Svoke said. “She’ll become restless,” he said. “She’ll walk around, she’ll try to lay down, decide it’s uncomfortable, then keep walking around.”
Lun Lun was in labor for 36 hours with Mei Lan.
