< month 21
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Who knew she had "Jaws of Steel" |
Monday, May 5
I hope that I am not repeating something that has already been said, but I can't seem to get online to check what others have written over the last week or so. So, I am going to write what is coming to my mind at this moment. It has surprised me how strong Mei Lan has gotten over the last few months, and I was reminded of this again today as I was cleaning up after her this morning. This observation is based on the thickness of the bamboo that she is able to break apart and culm to eat. There was a piece that was about two inches in diameter that she had eaten the end off of last night. This may not seen like anything special as it is only 2", but if you have ever tried to break a piece of bamboo yourself, you know how hard that is. Most people out there probably could not even break a piece that is only 1/2" thick in diameter. Mei is growing fast, but it just surprises me how such a small panda can have the strength in her arms and jaws to break it. Soon enough she will be like her parents that have been known to break pieces that are over 4" in diameter.
Joseph T. Svoke
Giant Panda Keeper II, Carnivore Department
Friday, May 2
It has been a quiet day at the giant panda building today. All three pandas are eating Yellow Groove and Viridis bamboo quite happily and napping in between feedings. Mei Lan is completely buried in bamboo right now as she eats. I can only see where she is by the movement of the bamboo. And for those of you keeping track, Mei Lan weighed 46.7 kg (~103 lbs.) this morning.
You may have noticed that the pandas are spending more time inside the dayrooms lately. Mei Lan is still happy to be outside on these warm afternoons, but the adult pandas, especially Yang Yang, start getting cranky when the thermometer creeps above 75 degrees. Pandas’ coats are very dense to protect them against the harsh winters in their natural habitat in the mountains of China. So, as you may expect, Yang Yang and Lun Lun are not very keen on Atlanta's summer weather. The dayrooms and the off-exhibit dens are climate-controlled and very comfortable for the pandas. As the weather gets hotter, expect to see the pandas inside more often; during the hottest months, they will be exclusively in the dayrooms.
Our red panda, Izzy, also has a coat adapted for colder climates. Therefore, in the warmer months, she prefers to spend most of her time in her nest box, which is air- conditioned, and she is rarely active during the main part of the day. The best time to see Izzy active is in the morning before it gets too warm or later in the day once it has cooled off.
Heather Baker Roberts
Keeper I, Carnivore Department
Wednesday, April 30
I’m not sure if Mei Lan had a late night party last night, but she sure was tired this morning. She was asleep in the tepee tree when I arrived at 7:00 a.m. and did not budge from that location until 11:30 a.m. Normally she is up at 7:30 and waiting at the door for her biscuits. My best guess is she had eaten an early morning snack sometime before I arrived and decided it was time for another nap. When she did wake up she climbed right out of her tree, got a drink of water, and proceeded to eat her biscuits and bamboo. I guess we all just need a little extra beauty rest from time to time.
Kate Roca
Carnivore Keeper II
Monday, April 28
The last two weeks have been pretty quiet for me. Although two more females have ovulated since I last wrote, they were both kept indoors from the moment their hormone levels began to rise. Nevertheless, I have been doing playbacks to some of the other females even though they are not yet showing signs of estrus. I think it is important to get as many playbacks done in as many different contexts as possible, because I am hopeful that the analysis of these playbacks will give me a platform for future research, in which I will have more specific objectives. We must remember that this is the first time ever that playback experiments have been conducted on giant pandas, and any findings will contribute greatly to our knowledge.
Aside from the work at the Chengdu Research Base, I am preparing do to some research at China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, Wolong, which involves collaboration with the Zoological Society of San Diego. I am excited about the research potential at that site and aim to determine whether female giant pandas can distinguish between the vocalisations of familiar vs. unfamiliar males. If they can, this will give us a basis to conduct a mate choice experiment based on caller familiarity next year.
Ben Charlton, PhD
Research Biologist
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Must find shoots! |
Friday, April 25
Today has been a great day for the giant pandas – it's the start of bamboo shoot season! Bamboo shoots are Lun Lun's and Yang Yang's favorite food. They love shoots even more than biscuits or fruit. Last year Mei Lan was still too young to eat shoots, so she got her first bamboo shoot today. She was very cute eating it – she was so excited she did not even sit down to eat it. She just gobbled it up as soon as she got it. During the spring, both adult pandas eat about five pounds of bamboo shoots per day, and some days the shoots are the only thing they want to eat. Since she is smaller, Mei Lan will get fewer shoots than Lun Lun and Yang Yang will, but it looks as though she is going to love bamboo shoots as much as her parents do.
Last night Mei Lan weighed 48.6 kg (107 lbs), so she is continuing to grow and thrive. She is starting to show a slight deviation in weight from morning to evening, like her parents do. I mentioned a couple of months ago that pandas fluctuate in weight throughout a 24-hour period. Adults can gain and then lose between 5 and 10 kg per day. Mei Lan is still young, so she is not gaining that much, but we have noticed she tends to gain around 1 to 2 kg during the day and drop back down overnight. For example, this past week, she has weighed around 46 kg in the morning and 48 kg in the evening.
Heather Baker Roberts
Keeper I, Carnivore Department
Wednesday, April 23
As everyone probably has already heard or read, Lun was artificially inseminated on Monday. Even though she has already ovulated and prime estrus is over, this does not mean that her behavior is back to normal. She will continue to show some typical breeding behaviors (vocalizations, feeding, activity to name a few) for a few days afterwards, as it is a gradual process getting back to normal.
On a side note, Mei Lan is distracting me right now as I am writing, as she is having a great old time, playing just like her dad does when he is happy. Back to what I was saying, Lun Lun will probably be back to normal by the end of the week. I have already started to mark our calendars in the building so we have an idea when we need to start to think of a possible birth(s). The average time is roughly around four months, but can be as short as two and a half months to as long as six months. So we are just going to play the waiting game now.
As for Yang, his breeding season behavior will probably continue for roughly a month or so, but should start to decrease soon. We typically see him start to change in January and continue into May, a lot longer time compared to Lun, which is about two weeks. Luckily, we don't have to worry about Mei Lan in all of this.
Joseph T. Svoke
Giant Panda Keeper II, Carnivore Department
Monday, April 21
It's been very busy at the giant panda building today. Yesterday, Lun Lun's hormone results indicated that she most likely ovulated sometime that afternoon. We introduced Yang Yang and Lun Lun for breeding that evening and again this morning, but they did not successfully breed. Therefore, two artificial insemination procedures were performed on Lun Lun with semen from Yang Yang. Because we were able to monitor Lun Lun's hormone levels so closely (Dave Kersey ran hormone assays on the two to four urine samples we collected per day over the past three days), we can estimate when Lun Lun ovulates quite accurately, which will hopefully give us a good chance for conception. Now that the breeding process is over, it is time to wait and see if Lun Lun becomes pregnant.
Mei Lan spent the morning sleeping in her favorite tree in the dayroom and is now exploring one of the habitats in between snacks of bamboo. She seems to be enjoying the sunny afternoon.
Heather Baker Roberts
Keeper I, Carnivore Department
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Hoping for another Mei |
Friday, April 18
As Kate mentioned in her update on Wednesday, estrus has officially started for Lun Lun. Her estrogen is climbing, and she is displaying the normal behavioral changes associated with estrus. She is spending a lot of time walking and scent marking. These are behaviors she would use to attract potential mates if she were in the wild. Her appetite has also decreased. The business of attracting mates and then mating comes first for giant pandas during estrus. So they forego their usual long feeding bouts for much shorter ones during this time. We are watching Lun Lun closely for signs of receptive behavior, which include bleating, chirping, and presenting her hindquarters to Yang Yang. These behaviors will indicate that Lun Lun is close to ovulation. That’s when we will give her and Yang Yang access to each other for breeding. They have not mated in previous years, but we remain hopeful that they will get it right this year.
If they don’t mate, we will artificially inseminate Lun Lun with semen from Yang Yang. That’s how Mei Lan was produced. The timing of artificial insemination is critical. We use behavioral and most importantly hormonal information to time artificial insemination. Dave Kersey, an endocrinologist from Conservation Research Center, a branch of Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park, is on his way to Atlanta this morning. He will be conducting hormone assays on urine samples from Lun Lun at least twice a day for the next several days to pinpoint ovulation. Dave did the same thing for us in 2006, and Mei Lan was the result of that breeding season. Dave started monitoring Lun Lun’s hormones again in February of this year. Look at the estrogen graph (PDF) to see Lun Lun’s hormone profiles from 2006 and 2008.
We also have a reproductive physiologist, Hou Rong, from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, on her way to Atlanta. She will arrive on Saturday and will be assisting with semen collection and artificial insemination. Hou Rong performed the artificial insemination in 2006. We will also have help from our usual partners from University of Georgia, Center for Behavioral Neuroscience based in Atlanta, and Georgia Tech. Producing a baby giant panda is pretty straightforward if the pandas just mate, but if they don’t it’s a major effort. We are very fortunate to have an outstanding team of people to help.
Rebecca Snyder, PhD
Curator of Carnivores
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| Nothing fazes Mei when it comes to bamboo! |
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Wednesday, April 16
It’s been a busy day in the Carnivore Department today. Izzy the red panda (who is also under our care) had her routine physical today. She is trained to enter her carrying crate, which she did right on cue. This allowed us to take her to the vet clinic to get checked out by the vets. She received her clean bill of heath and was back in her habitat after lunch.
After taking Izzy back to her habitat, we set off to rotate the areas where we were housing Lun Lun and Mei Lan so that Lun Lun could have some outdoor time next to Yang Yang (we have started to “howdy” them by opening the black panel door between the outdoor exhibits so they have mesh-to mesh-access to one another other). This turned out to be a much longer task then it should have been, as Lun Lun has entered her less cooperative period of breeding season. She had been very active all morning, including locomoting about her exhibit and scent marking. But after lunch all she wanted to do was sleep. All her behavioral signs of a pending estrus have now been backed up by hormones. Her estrogen started to increase this past Sunday, and her progestins started to decrease Monday. These changes indicate that estrus has started. Now we just have to wait for her to ovulate.
Through all of this, Mei Lan has been her normal little self. All of the breeding season commotion hasn’t seemed to faze her at all. She seems more occupied by nap times and bamboo – just as a young panda should be. She really is enjoying her bamboo and seems to know when it is time for more biscuits. She was quite cute this afternoon when I brought her in to be weighed. She was running full-force into the back holding area and slid to a stop right in front of me, ready for her biscuits. I guess a growing girl needs all the yummy treats she can get.
Kate Roca
Carnivore Keeper II
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Dainty Mei |
Monday, April 14
Breeding season for us here at Zoo Atlanta is drawing ever closer, and the two adult pandas' behaviors are showing. Today (just like he has over the last couple of months), Yang has spent much of the morning walking around his habitat. One thing that is different is that I have noticed more olfactory investigations going on, as well as more scent marking, which are very good signs. Lun's consumption of bamboo has dropped slightly over the last two days, which is showing us that there is probably a change in her hormone levels. Yesterday morning, I gave both Lun and Yang a chance to interact through some mesh, which they seemed to enjoy some. Yang started off by bleating as he walked towards Lun, and Lun replied with some chirps. Both continued with a series of bleats and chirps for a few minutes. Yang then decided that he was going to sit down and start to rub all over the mesh and start to "self-anoint" himself, right in front on Lun. These are all good signs that Lun should be ready to potentially breed soon, and that Yang is very interested in her. We still don't know when Lun will be in proper estrus, as we will have to wait for hormone analysis, but it is approaching quickly.
Joseph T. Svoke
Giant Panda Keeper II, Carnivore Department
Friday, April 11
As breeding season progresses, we are noticing more and more behaviors that are rarely seen outside of this time of year. One of these behaviors is water play. Almost every day in the past week, both Lun Lun and Yang Yang have been seen playing in their pools. They do not swim, but they do sit in the pool and slap the water or splash themselves with the water. It is fun to watch them play in the water and they seem to enjoy themselves. Occasionally, they water play outside of breeding season, but not as often as during. Hopefully, we can catch this behavior on PandaCam in the next few weeks for those of you out there watching.
Heather Baker Roberts
Keeper I, Carnivore Department
Wednesday, April 9
Mei Lan reached another marker in her life this past week – she has now crossed the 100-pound mark. Yesterday she weighed 46.8kg (103lbs). So I would say that she has done quite well in adjusting to her mainly bamboo diet (plus some yummy fruit, veggies and biscuits from her keepers) since being weaned.
We have also started to see some small physical changes in Lun Lun that precede estrus, though her hormones are still at baseline. Yang Yang continues to locomote about his exhibit and scent mark to let Lun Lun know that he is in the area and looking for love. It looks like we are on trac k for breeding season, though we are still at least a of couple weeks away.
Kate Roca
Carnivore Keeper II
