Keepers at a zoo in the united states, had a surprise when the giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to cute twin panda's. Panda's are an endangered animal specie, and are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. So this is huge.
Staffers at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC, discovered she was pregnant last week during an ultra sound. Mei is on loan to the Zoo from china. The national zoo is one of the four zoo's in the US to have pandas, all loaned from china. BBC reports that the cub's are healthy. Mei Xiang who has twoother offspring is one of the zoo's star attractions.
Female pandas are able to conceive for only two or three days a year, leading to a very low reproduction rate.
Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated with sperm from the zoo's resident male Tian Tian and a panda named Hui Hui from Wolong, China.
It will not be known for a while which is the father, or what sex the cubs are.
The panda population is threatened by habitat loss as land is increasingly inhabited by humans, with about 1,800 pandas left in the wild in China.
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