Washington – Tai Shan might have to move over. The National Zoo could be celebrating the birth of a second giant panda cub this summer. Or not.
There are signs that Tai Shan’s mother, Mei Xiang, is pregnant again, zoo officials said Thursday. They quickly cautioned that pandas can have false pregnancies that mimic real ones; Mei Xiang had such a pseudo-pregnancy in 2004.
As with Tai Shan, who was born the next year, the pregnancy watch could continue right to the last minute – in July – with no one knowing for certain.
The buzz began Wednesday when the mama panda’s hormone levels spiked, two months after she went into heat and was artificially inseminated twice over two days with sperm from a male panda named Gao Gao. His sperm had been frozen and flown, first-class, from the San Diego Zoo.
But with pandas, there’s no such thing as a reliable pregnancy test. Whether or not the insemination worked, Mei Xiang’s hormone levels were expected to spike at some point. If her hormone levels stay elevated, the truth probably will emerge in 30 to 50 days, zoo spokesman John Gibbons said. At that point, the hormone levels will drop, and a baby panda will be born or the pregnancy will be proved false.
