January 23, 2009
Mei Xiang may be expecting!
The happy couple. Photograph by Ann Batdorf, NZP photographer.
On Tuesday, January 15, National Zoo scientists observed two twitterpated pandas. That’s right, darlings Mei Xiang and Tian Tian have been snuggling up together. Or at least trying to. Because, in the National Zoo’s words, “competent mating did not occur.”
On January 17, Mei was once again anesthetized and artificially inseminated. (“Competent mating”? Who can put on their A-game with people watching? Give those poor critters a break!)
Yeah, for most people this sounds like a really bad date—but even so, we’ve got our fingers crossed hoping that there’s a bun in the oven this year. (And we all remember Mei’s disappointing false pregnancy, right?) With only about 1,600 pandas left in the wild, every little butterstick that Mei can produce helps—and with Tai Shan currently set to return to China later this year, we would like another tyke on whom we can slather our affections. A new bundle of panda joy could pop out between 90 and 185 days from now and we here at ATM will keep you posted on all the latest panda happenings.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
[...] snows, we ooh and aah over a frolicking Tian Tian. When Mei Xiang is artificially inseminated, we wait with bated breath. When it is Tai Shan’s birthday, we post pictures of him devouring his beet juice-stained [...]
[...] will this year bring? [Kersey’s] theory was put to the test in January, when Mei Xiang went into heat two months earlier than the previous year…. And so, on Jan. 15, [...]