Zoo Atlanta baby panda moved to incubator

Zoo Atlanta officials late Monday transferred its newborn giant panda to an incubator, but gave no indication why.

Spokeswoman Keisha Hines-Davis said the move was made based on “some behaviors by the panda and its mother, Lun Lun.”

Hines-Davis said she did not have any more information.

The cellphone-sized infant was born late Saturday after weeks of speculation whether Lun Lun, who bore giant panda Mei Lan in 2006, was pregnant. Officials said Sunday that mother and child were doing fine and they observed Lun Lun keeping the cub warm and heard sounds of nursing, two crucial tests in the first days of a panda’s birth.

On Monday, carnivore keeper Kate Roca wrote positively about the early relationship in the zoo’s panda blog.

“Lun Lun continues to be a wonderful mom to her new cub,” she wrote. “She reacts to the cub’s vocalizations quite quickly, showing she learned a lot from raising Mei Lan. We continue to hear signs that the cub is nursing and have seen Lun Lun licking the cub to stimulate it to void its waste.”

The newborn is one of 13 pandas currently in American zoos, including its sister Mei Lan and father Yang Yang, both at Zoo Atlanta.

Mei Lan and Yang Yang napped in separate rooms of the indoor part of the panda habitat on Monday. Zoo officials will keep Yang Yang apart from his new cub as they have with Mei Lan, because male pandas in the wild typically don’t stay with their offspring.

Mei Lan’s birth was a landmark event for the zoo, drawing in thousands of visitors and generating a huge number of hits on the online panda cam. Weekend attendance figures weren’t yet available Monday, but zoo officials said they’re expecting them to be higher than normal because of the new arrival. Zoo officials said the current panda video feed has been suspended.

Hines-Davis said more information on the transfer could be forthcoming, but she was unable to say when and what that information might be.

The zoo has two incubators on hand, chiefly in anticipation that Lun Lun might have twins, which is common for giant pandas. If Lun Lun had had another cub, she would been unable to care for the second infant and zoo officials would have taken over, the zoo said. In the wild, the second cub often dies because the mother concentrates most of her efforts on the first born.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.