Double Trouble: Washington DC Zoo Welcomes Twin Pandas

“We’ve all been involved in events that don’t go well”.

“This is still a very fragile time”, he said.

The tiny pandas, born to 17-year-old Mei Xiang, weigh just three to five ounces and are now pink, hairless and blind. Though the zoo’s camera-viewing site can host about 850 viewers at a time, spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson says the site has been overloaded with people trying to watch.

The National Zoo announced the birth of the second cub via Twitter. When she gave birth to Bao Bao, there was another stillborn sibling.

However, Mei Xiang lifted the cub up shortly after giving birth and was tending to her new born when officials decided to leave her alone for an extended period.

To track each cub’s progress, officials are measuring and weighing each cub as they switch them out. It was placed in an incubator. Only a set born in 2013 at the Atlanta zoo has survived. This allows one of the cubs to nurse and spend time with the mother while the other is bottle fed and kept warm in the incubator.

“There is not really a definite time when we’re out of the woods”.

No decision has yet been made about the names. “In 2012, we lost a cub after six days”.

The sex of the cubs is not yet known. “That said, if we get concerned we are prepared to take any emergency actions to get our hand on the baby and see what’s going on”, he said.

Mei Xiang, the panda housed in Washington, D.C.’s National Zoo, gave birth-as expected-to two cubs on Saturday, about four hours apart.

Officials artificially inseminated Mei Xiang on April 26 and 27 with sperm that was from Hui Hui and had been frozen.

The zoo will confirm the father through a DNA test. Both cubs seem healthy after preliminary screenings.

Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub named Bao Bao nearly two years ago to the day, on August 23, 2013. While panda-lovers were rejoicing over that birth, they had a surprise on their way: the second cub was born at 10:07. Mei Xiang will likely not leave her den for the next several days in order to focus on caring for her babies. “She never does anything twice”, said Thompson. The enclosure will be closed to ensure peace and quiet, though online “panda cams” provide a video stream of the creatures.

Giant pandas are one of the most endangered species in the world and are notoriously hard to breed in captivity but both cubs appear healthy, the BBC reported.