The Toronto Zoo is celebrating a Canadian first with the birth of two tiny, pink panda cubs.
Giant panda “Er Shun” gave birth to the bear cubs at the zoo on Tuesday at 3:31 a.m. and 3:44 a.m. The zoo also released video of one of the births on YouTube Tuesday morning.
“Er Shun is demonstrating excellent maternal instincts and began cleaning and cradling the first cub soon after its birth,” the zoo said in a statement on Tuesday. The cub weighed 187.7 grams at birth.
The mother has also bonded with her second cub, who weighs only 115 grams. Officials have not yet said whether the cubs are male or female.
“While this is wonderful news, the tiny cubs are very vulnerable at this size, so the next several hours and days will be critical to their survival,” the statement said.
The cubs will remain in a maternity area of the giant panda house for several months, and will not be visible to the public.
The guinea pig-sized bears are the first giant pandas to be born in Canada, and were conceived through artificial insemination.
The cubs’ 8-year-old mother was inseminated in April 2014, but the attempt was unsuccessful. She was inseminated again in May as part of a worldwide giant panda captive breeding program.
Zoo officials said the procedure was necessary because the lumbering female wasn’t “jiving” with her male partner, 7-year-old Da Mao. Reproductive scientists used sperm collected from Da Mao, as well as frozen sperm from two giant pandas living in China.
The cubs will remain at the Toronto Zoo when their mother leaves for Calgary in 2018. Er Shun and male panda Da Mao are on loan to Canada from China for 10 years, five of which are being spent in Toronto, and five which will be spent in Alberta.
Source: toronto.ctvnews.ca