Born blind, pink and helpless!
Newborn giant pandas are almost completely unrecognizable.
Six weeks after giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth in Washington, Smithsonian’s National Zoo revealed the gender of the newborn cub with an adorable photo and the results of a genetic test. It’s a boy!
The genetic testing was conducted at the still-unnamed newborn’s first veterinary exam in September, a month after its birth on August 21. Genetic tests are the only way to discern the sex of a panda cub in the earliest weeks of its life. Not only are mothers incredibly protective of the cubs at this age, but pandas are also born without genitalia.
That’s not all they’re missing at birth. Newborn giant pandas are almost completely unrecognizable. Rather than sporting their iconic black-and-white markings, pandas emerge from their mothers as pink, wrinkly, blind, squealing creatures roughly the size of a stick of butter.
Pandas are born fragile and underdeveloped. Weighing between 3-5 ounces, newborn pandas are 1/900th the weight of their mother. This places them among the smallest newborns compared to their mother of any mammal: Human mothers are only about 20 times heavier than their babies, and killer whales are 50 times heavier.
Only marsupials emerge smaller‚ and that’s because their babies get to hole up in their mothers’ pouches to finish developing. Red kangaroos, for example, are born at 1/100,000th the weight of their mothers.
Researchers don’t know for sure why pandas are born so tiny. A study found that other bear species gestate for two months and are born with mature skeletons, while newborn pandas gestate for only a month and their skeletons emerge comparatively ‘undercooked’.
The short gestation likely has to do with the bamboo that makes up most of the bear’s diet. Bamboo doesn’t have many nutrients. Rather than expend the enormous amounts of energy needed to grow a fetus, female pandas can focus on developing the high-fat milk that will help their cubs grow outside of the womb.
Panda newborns rely on their mother for milk and protection because they cannot see, hear, or crawl. They are so helpless that they can’t regulate their body temperatures or even excrete waste on their own in the first weeks of life.
Instead, the mother has to take care of both, cradling her cubs to keep them warm and rubbing their bellies to stimulate the muscles to release urine and feces. In these early weeks, panda mothers don’t leave their cubs, even when they need to eat or drink.
Motherhood is such a demanding job that pandas who give birth to twins can often only take care of one—and are forced to abandon the other. In captivity, scientists step in to care for the neglected cub and even attempt to swap the cubs to ensure both get their mother’s attention and milk.
Within 48 hours after birth, white fur begins covering their pink skin, followed by the black markings around their eyes and on their bodies. Within about three weeks, their fur is all filled in.
Newborn pandas also gain weight at a rapid pace. After about a month of holding their babies all day every day, mothers start to experiment with putting their cubs on the ground and leaving the den briefly for food and water breaks.
At six weeks, they start to open their eyes, and by two months, their ear canals are open.
Their squeals deepen into grunts. Finally, around three or four months old, their external genitalia begins to develop, and pandas can finally defecate and urinate on their own. They start to crawl, grow teeth, and may even begin to mouth bamboo — signaling that these cubs are ready for the next phase of life.
