Hopes that the female panda Bai Yun will give birth to a second live cub dwindled Thursday, two days after the birth of the first of the twins she was carrying, said officials at the San Diego Zoo in southern California, United States.

Between midnight and one a.m. local time Thursday, members of the San Diego Zoo Panda Watch team observing Bai Yun in a nursing den through closed-circuit television, saw motion representing bouts of contractions, said zoo spokesman Paul Garcia.

But no birth immediately followed, and the zoo's panda experts expect the second cub will be stillborn, he said.

Zoo experts have been waiting anxiously for the second birth after Bai Yun, on loan from China, delivered the first of the two cubs at 1"Twin deliveries of pandas are fairly common, happening in about 50 percent of pregnancy cases, according to the zoo. The mother will typically reject the second cub, but zoo experts will step in to take care of the new one if it arrives.

Most successful twin panda births occur within 12 hours of each other, though other bear species have given birth to twins as much as 30 hours apart, zoo spokeswoman Yadira Galindo said Thursday. Experts said a second birth more than 24 hours after the first would be highly unusual.

Still, the Panda Watch team members are "very pleased" because Bai Yun is taking excellent care of the cub born Tuesday. "Nursing is going well," Garcia said.
While disappointed at the absence of a second life birth, panda experts monitoring Bai Yun feel that her health is not of immediate concern. "They feel confident that she's not at risk," Garcia said.

Panda Watch team leader Doug Lindburg said Wednesday that there is a strong possibility the second cub will be stillborn, but the monitors would let nature take its course unless the panda showed signs of medical distress.

"Because of the high-risk situation, it's not a very savory option to intervene as one would in other situations," said Patrick Morris, a veterinarian.
The sex of the newborn, which weighs about 4 ounces, is unknown and will probably remain undetermined for about a week.

Bai Yun was being kept in a private pen beyond the view of zoo visitors. Her cub was making squawking sounds about every half hour to be fed, which experts said was a positive sign.

The cub's birth was the first in the United States since 1999, when Bai Yun delivered a female panda, Hua Mei, the first US-born panda to survive beyond adolescence.

The birth brought to four the number of pandas at the zoo, which now has the largest panda population outside China. In addition to Bai Yun and her new cub, there are Hua Mei and male panda Gao Gao.

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