Quake panda gives birth to twins
2008-07-07 09:41
Beijing - A panda that was relocated following China's deadly earthquake in May gave birth on Sunday morning to twin cubs, a state news agency said.
Guo Guo was the first panda to give birth since the 7.9-magnitude quake that rocked Sichuan province on May 12, killing nearly 70 000 people and leaving 5 million homeless, Xinhua News Agency reported.
One cub weighed 170 grams, Xinhua said. Guo Guo was cuddling the other cub and staffers at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base were not able to weigh it. The report did not give the sex of the twins.
Twelve-year-old Guo Guo was moved to the Bifengxia panda centre after the quake caused heavy damage at the Wolong Nature Reserve, China's main panda breeding center where Guo Guo normally lives.
Wolong, tucked in the lush mountains of Sichuan province, was close to the epicentre of the earthquake. One panda at Wolong was killed and another remains missing.
Most of its 63 pandas had to be moved after the quake because of the threat of landslides and other hazards.
Some were taken to the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base about 120 kilometres outside Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu.
Others were taken to another breeding centre in Chengdu, facilities in the Chinese capital of Beijing, the eastern province of Fujian and the southern province of Guangdong.
Phones at the Bifengxia panda centre rang unanswered on Sunday.
The Wolong reserve is at the heart of China's effort to use captive breeding and artificial insemination to save the giant panda, which is revered as an unofficial national mascot.
Only about 1 600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in Sichuan.
An additional 180 have been bred in captivity, many of them at Wolong, and scores have been loaned or given to zoos abroad, with the revenues helping fund conservation programmes.
- AP