One of two panda cubs born last weekend at Washington’s National Zoo has died, zoo officials said.
Animal keepers on Tuesday stepped in to give extra care to the smaller of the newborn cubs after mom Mei Xiang began to focus her attention on the larger of the twins. Keepers tried bottle- and tube-feeding the smaller cub when Mei Xiang began to refuse it care.
The zoo said the remaining cub appears to be strong and behaving normally.
The smaller cub weighed 86 grams (3 ounces) at birth, and the larger cub weighed 138 grams. According to the zoo, bear cubs have the smallest infant-to-mother size ratio of any placental mammals at about 1 to 700. Panda mother Mei Xiang currently weighs about 238lb (108kg).
If both cubs had survived, they would have been the 17-year-old panda’s third and fourth surviving offspring.
This isn’t the first time that Mei Xiang has lost a cub. A stillborn cub was born in 2013. And in 2012, Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub that died after just six days. She has two other surviving cubs born in 2005 and 2013.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
