Panda fans gather to see newborn

Linda Morris is one dedicated panda fan.

The special needs teacher at East Cobb Middle School visited Zoo Atlanta on Saturday morning, just hours before Lun Lun the giant panda went into labor. That evening, Morris tuned into the zoo’s Panda Cam on her computer and watched for hours, until Lun Lun gave birth shortly after 10 p.m.

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Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com

The inside viewing area of the Zoo Atlanta panda exhibit was busy Sunday.

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COURTESY ZOO ATLANTA

The baby can be seen in front of the proud mother.

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Sunday, Morris was back at the panda exhibit, staring transfixed with other visitors at a video monitor showing Lun Lun cradling her newborn close to her furry black-and-white chest.

“My kids absolutely love watching Mei Lan growing,” said Morris, who will return Saturday for a second birthday party for Lun Lun’s other offspring, Mei Lan, “and they have been so excited about Lun Lun having another baby.”

The 230-pound Lun Lun will concentrate on her cub’s health — largely refusing to let it go — for about two weeks, zoo officials said. She is trying to keep the baby warm, since the temperature of its now-hairless body can drop rapidly, and to provide life-saving antibodies through her milk.

“The cub is strong,” said Rebecca Snyder, the zoo’s curator of carnivores. “It’s pink, which is a good, healthy color.”

Outside Lun Lun’s peaceful den, happy panda fans gathered, watching mother and child on monitors as well as Mei Lan and Yang Yang, father of both cubs.

Children smiled at the slumbering Lun Lun and her yet-to-be-named cub while their parents explained why zoos are trying to save the pandas from extinction.

The herbivores are endangered in their native habitat in China, and Atlanta’s and other zoos around the world are attempting to grow their numbers.

Zoo Atlanta’s newest cub brings the number of pandas in American zoos to 13. Of the four zoos with the animals, four are now in Atlanta, three in Washington, four in San Diego and two in Memphis.

Following Chinese tradition — all four of Atlanta’s pandas are on loan from the Chingdu Research base of Giant Panda Breeding in China — the newborn panda will be named 100 days after its birth.

Simone Griffin, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said as with Mei Lan, residents will be asked to help the attraction name the new cub. The zoo makes the final decision on the name.

Lun Lun gave birth at 10:10 p.m. Saturday, becoming the only giant panda in this country to have a cub so far this year. Washington’s National Zoo confirmed last month that its female panda had a psuedopregnancy — a display of behaviors that mimic pregnancy — and would not have a cub.

The labor and birth was caught on a live 24-hour video feed that was streamed by several news organizations, including www.ajc.com. After several hours of visible restlessness, Lun Lun stood up in a yoga-like position — looking very much like a fur-covered table — and then moved away to reveal the newest family member.

Lun Lun had been in labor for about nine hours, a more normal timeline for giant pandas and far less than the 36 hours it took for Mei Lan to be born – a panda record, zoo officials said.

The zoo will continue to watch to see if a second panda — expectant pandas often have twins — is born. If so, the births can be as much as 24 hours apart.

Lun Lun, who turned 11 last Monday, could have cubs until about the age of 20, Snyder said. Pandas raised in zoos usually live into their 30s while their counterparts in the wild live to about 17.

The new cub, the size of a cellphone, is a little larger than Mei Lan, which weighed 4 ounces at birth, said Zoo Atlanta President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Kelly.

Officials will try to determine the newborn’s gender and measure its weight in a week or two if Lun Lun leaves it briefly to get food, Snyder said. But panda mothers can go as much as three weeks without eating after birth, so there are no guarantees, she said.

The birth of the panda could be another boon to the zoo. Attendance skyrocketed when Mei Lan was born. People came from around the world to see her, snapping up calendars, taking photos and forming clubs in her honor.

Marcus Margerum, vice president of marketing and sales for the zoo, said attendance for 2009 has been projected to be about 740,000, but figure that could grow by 10 to 20 percent because of the new panda. The cub could begin going on limited exhibition in about four months.