Japan zoo celebrates birth of baby panda

A JAPANESE zoo celebrated the first birth of a baby panda in five years yesterday, with the tiny cub small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand.

Eleven-year-old mum Shin Shin gave birth just before noon, officials at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo said in a statement.

Pandas are born pink, hairless and weighing around 100 grams – so small it can be difficult to determine their sex.

“There have been cases where the sex of a panda has been found to be wrongly determined several years after its birth,” a zoo spokesman said.

Shin Shin, who mated with male Ri Ri in February, had another baby in 2012 – the first time at the zoo in 24 years, but the cub died from pneumonia six days later.

Footage from a camera inside the panda enclosure showed the moment of birth, when the screeching noises of the tiny baby could clearly be heard as Shin Shin scooped it up with her mouth.

Zoo officials were not immediately able to give exact details about the size and weight of the cub as the proud mum, who tips the scales at 110 kilograms (240 pounds), protectively cuddled her new-born baby.

“Most of the time the mother has been cradling her baby so we haven’t been able to measure it precisely,” a spokeswoman said.

As a mother-to-be, Shin Shin delighted huge crowds of wellwishers in Tokyo last month as she sat lazily munching on bamboo and playfully rubbed the husks on her furry belly before being moved into confinement.

Considered an endangered species, it is estimated fewer than 2,000 giant pandas remain in the wild, in three provinces in south-central China.

Giant pandas are painfully bashful animals and clumsy lovers, with males often miscalculating when a female is in the mood for love. In the event the cuddly creatures do feel a romantic spark, sex is frequently over too quickly to impregnate the female, who is only receptive to the proposition for two or three days a year.

Shin Shin’s happy news was broadcast on national television and has already had an economic impact on local businesses.

The birth could also potentially help thaw the often frosty diplomatic relations between Japan and China as Beijing caught the celebratory mood.

“Giant pandas are always messengers of friendship from China towards other countries,” said Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Lu Kang.