WASHINGTON (AP) – The “cake” was made from frozen fruit juice, sweet potatoes, carrots and sugar cane and lasted about 15 minutes after the mother of the giant panda Mei Xiang and her young child Xiao Chi Ji got it.
The National Zoo’s most famous tenants had an enthusiastic breakfast on Saturday in front of adoring crowds as the zoo celebrated 50 years of its iconic panda swap deal with the Chinese government.
Xiao Qi’s father, Ji Tian Tian, spent much of the morning celebrating crunching bamboo in an adjacent enclosure, with the sounds of its blossoms clearly heard during a statement by Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang. The ambassador praised the bears as a “symbol of friendship” between nations.
Pandas are almost completely lonely by nature and in the wild Tian Tian will probably never meet his child. For lunch he received a similar cake.
In addition to welcoming the 1972 agreement sparked by President Richard Nixon’s remarkable visit to China, Saturday’s celebration also highlighted the success of the global giant panda breeding program, which helped bring bears back to the brink of extinction.
The birth of Xiao Qi Ji in August 2020 was hailed as almost a miracle due to Mei Xiang’s advanced age and the fact that zoo staff performed the artificial insemination procedure under strict restrictions shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic closed the entire zoo. At 22, Mei Xiang was the oldest giant panda to successfully give birth in the United States.
They would usually use a combination of frozen semen and fresh semen extracted from Tian Tian. But to minimize the number of close medical procedures, zoo staff used only frozen semen.
“It was definitely a long-term pregnancy,” said Brian Amaral, a senior mammal curator at the zoo.
In honor of this long shot, the now 20-month-old was given a name that translates as “little miracle.” His birth in the middle of the pandemic sparked a new wave of pandamania, with viewers of live broadcasts of panda cameras at the zoo growing by 1,200 percent.
“I know how passionate people are about pandas,” Amaral said. “I’m not at all surprised by this passion.”
Of course, the crowds began to flock straight to the panda section at 8 a.m. when the zoo opened. Sisters Lorelai and Everly Greenwell, aged 6 and 5, ran to the fence, chanting “Panda! Panda!” Pandas! ”
They watched as the little one rolled around, trying to fight his mother and tear off the zero of the giant 50 inscribed on the ice cake.
“They knew it was coming,” their mother, Kaylee Greenwell of Mount Ranie, Maryland, told her girls. “We’ve been talking about this all week.”
The original pair of pandas at the zoo in 1972, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, have been stellar attractions at the zoo for decades, but the panda’s pregnancy is known to be difficult and none of their young have survived.
Mei Xiang and Tian Tian arrived in 2000 and the couple successfully gave birth to three other young: Tai Shan, Bao Bao and Bei Bei – also through artificial insemination. All were transported to China at the age of 4 under the zoo’s agreement with the Chinese government.
Similar agreements with zoos around the world have helped revive the giant panda population. Up to just over 1,000 bears in the 1980s, the species has since been removed from the endangered list.
Add Comment