Among Pandas: Wolong Nursery
These days, the panda cubs in the nursery at Wolong are usually one-half of twins born to their mothers. They are examples of the success Wolong has had in a strategy embarked on a few years ago – swap rearing, in which humans and panda mothers share the responsibility of rearing twins born to the latter. This involves leaving one cub with the mother and swapping it with its sibling so both cubs spend time nursing with mama. Newborns are swapped every 4 days or so, and as they grow older, the length of days away from mama increases to around 10 days. And while one of them is with her, the other one is in the nursery, enjoying a simulated environment involving time in the incubator in temperatures similar to mama’s body warmth and sometimes even a covering made of panda fur (either fake, or real from pandas who have passed on).
Twins are actually a common occurence for the giant panda population. However, in the wild, the weaker twin is often abandoned because the mother can only care for one at a time – she needs one paw to feed herself and the other paw to hold and nurse the surviving cub.
In Wolong, after observing this happening to their captive panda mums, the scientists decided to try taking away the younger baby to care for in the nursery. This was possible due to the extreme trust the pandas have in their human keepers – to the point of allowing them near their newborn cubs to examine and take away. Nowadays, the scientists don’t take away just one cub but both cubs for a quick examination before one of them is returned to the mother and the other remains in the nursery waiting for its turn.
Of course, the nursery was not built just for the purpose of swap rearing, but has been in existence long before, used to examine newborns, and also to house the ones rejected by their mothers. One such rejected cub is Fei Fei, mother of my Yoong Ping; her birth and rejection was documented in the National Geographic documentary I saw in 2000, and then included in a follow-up documentary a few years later. It is a good thing – indeed, a miracle – that her rejection has not affected Fei Fei’s own capabilities as a mother herself.
Here are some pictures of precious cubs in the nursery when I visited in early September 2007, including one (the last picture) of Hua Mei’s younger twin who was having her turn in the nursery at that time.
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Related Video:
Panda cub gets a massage
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