Squats, pee swaps and the ‘roller-coaster ride’ of making a panda baby in Singapore
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Squats, pee swaps and the 'roller-coaster ride' of making a panda infant in Singapore
Which was the 'smart bear', and which made swell progress in the mating process? Talking Bespeak gets the inside scoop from the Wild fauna Reserves Singapore team looking after Kai Kai and Jia Jia.
The new mother licks her cub.
25 Sep 2022 06:15AM (Updated: 02 October 2022 07:51PM)
SINGAPORE: When he saw the chirapsia middle of giant panda Jia Jia'due south foetus on the ultrasound motorcar, Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) vet Heng Yirui wondered if he was seeing things.
Afterwards all, Jia Jia had taken him and his colleagues on a "roller-coaster ride" for years. She had shown signs of pregnancy before simply was never truly pregnant.
"She would lactate, she would accept some milk, she would feel very uncomfortable in her stomach. She would get off her food... Her uterus would besides be thickened, sometimes filled with fluid likewise. Simply she just wasn't pregnant," said Dr Heng.
And then, the ultrasound browse on Baronial 10 was routine.
But only as he was most to end the procedure, the vet spotted "foreign abnormalities" not seen in previous years – there was something moving in Jia Jia's uterus.
Dr Heng did non tell the panda'southward caretakers what he had seen until the scan was over. So he phoned his dominate, Dr Abraham Mathew, WRS' assistant vice-president of veterinary services.
When he went upwardly to the role and told his colleagues taking care of the pandas the news, they were in disbelief. "This was already at the end of the day – 5.xxx, 6pm – everyone was winding down and ordinarily when I turn up, I might be joking," he recounted on CNA'due south Talking Point programme.
Some told him, "You've got to exist kidding, don't practise this kind of thing to united states right at present."
Dr Heng played them the video of the beating middle, and the team started whipping out their phones and running around. "Everyone was but and so happy, then ecstatic," he said.
The vet was excited but also a fiddling panicky "because we have waited for so many years for this i moment, and this is the fourth dimension for u.s. to execute all these plans… to welcome this babe."
Behemothic pandas were one time endangered, just conservation efforts including habitat protection have boosted their numbers.
In that location are at present over 1,800 of the bamboo-chomping mammals in the wild and over 600 of them in captivity in China and zoos around the world. They are considered a vulnerable species.
Efforts to get Jia Jia and Kai Kai to mate began in 2015, 3 years subsequently they arrived from Sichuan in China on a 10-twelvemonth loan. Jia Jia is now 13 while Kai Kai is fourteen.
ALL ABOUT THE PEE
The lone bears had split enclosures merely a window between the two dens allowed them to smell, see and get used to each other, WRS' vice-president of showroom blueprint Cham Tud Yinn told Talking Betoken host Sharda Harrison.
At the end of 2014, WRS adjusted the photoperiod (the length of day) and temperature in the panda complex to reverberate the seasonal changes of their natural habitat, said Trisha Tay, head animal caretaker for pandas. This resulted in Jia Jia having her beginning oestrous bike, or being in heat, in 2015.
The caretakers besides nerveless the pee of both pandas and placed the liquid in each other'south dens during mating flavour. To get the pandas more interested in each other, they too got to swap dens in society to go many more than whiffs of the other'due south scent.
The team needed to accept Jia Jia's pee frequently to decide her oestrogen levels, so the caretakers taught her to pee on control by giving her a cue and rewarding her for urinating. The "smart comport" picked it up quickly, said Tay.
Lookout man: How It Took vi Years to Brood Singapore's First Panda Cub (23:22)
WRS endocrine analyst Josephine Kawi is the squad member most keenly acquainted with Jia Jia's hormones, having monitored them since the latter beginning ovulated in 2015.
Caretakers collect Jia Jia'southward urine once a solar day outside of the breeding season, and twice a day in the lead-up to it. During the convenance season, the team collects every single sample it tin. Kawi runs a test called the enzyme immunoassay to read Jia Jia's hormone levels.
Over a two-week period, she monitors as Jia Jia'south hormones commencement to ascension. When the bear's oestrogen peaks, Kawi would inform her colleagues that Jia Jia has ovulated and "now information technology'south time to either put them together or perform the insemination".
"I take a very intimate relationship with her hormone levels," she declared.
Time is of the essence because Jia Jia is only fertile for 24 to 48 hours each year. This is likewise why pandas are notoriously hard to breed.
NATURAL AND Artificial ATTEMPTS
For the first three years from 2022 to 2017, WRS let the ii pandas mate naturally and besides did artificial insemination, where either fresh or thawed semen is injected directly into Jia Jia'southward cervix during ovulation.
After 3 unsuccessful years, the team tried just bogus insemination for two years, in 2022 and 2019. Still no cub.
New enquiry was showing that birth rates from natural mating were much higher - 60.7 per cent - compared to 18.five per cent from bogus methods, said Tay.
Male giant pandas also attain full reproductive maturity from age x. And then final year, the team decided to let Kai Kai have another go at natural mating and skipped artificial insemination. Kai Kai showed "great progress" from his younger days, said Tay.
His improvement was also the result of human assist. To strengthen his hind legs, which he needed to mount Jia Jia, caretakers conditioned him to do squat exercises. "He would sigh every time we wanted to practise this," observed WRS keeper Norfaizah Abdul Aziz.
For enrichment, the caretakers would necktie bamboo or other goodies in higher positions that required him to climb or stand on his hind legs. To superlative it off, they let Kai Kai watch videos of how other pandas get it on.
But in that location was still no cub.
This year, the program was to endeavor natural mating with bogus methods equally a back-upwards, said Tay. Simply the commencement part of the programme was scuppered when Kai Kai got "a chip aggressive".
The pandas were separated and Jia Jia underwent bogus insemination on Apr 24 during the concluding stretch of her fertile menstruation – the 47 thursday hour of the 48-hour window.
The procedure was the same as in previous years, simply the team was a lot more confident and comfortable because of guidance by various experts over the years, said Dr Mathew.
"Too, the procedure this year was extremely smooth. Sometimes nosotros get all kinds of complications – her bladder may be too full, in that location's urine contamination, things like that. We didn't take whatever of that this year."
After the insemination, they tilted Jia Jia slightly to let gravity help with the flow of semen. "We kept her in this position for a good 10, 15 minutes. This time, nosotros had very accurate placement of the semen into the reproductive tract of Jia Jia," said Dr Mathew.
WATCHED MAMA LIKE A HAWK
The vets monitored her clinical signs and behaviour like a hawk. They performed ultrasound scans weekly, stepping information technology upwardly to twice a week sometime in August. Research has shown a baby would be born in seven days from the time a foetal heartbeat can exist detected, said Dr Heng.
When the pregnancy was confirmed, everyone swung into action even as they took pains not to stress Jia Jia too much considering pandas can resorb or miscarry the foetus.
Two caretakers monitored her 24/seven. They recorded behaviour such equally her vulva licking frequency and whether she was having contractions, said Tay.
They prepared the tools needed in the event the first-fourth dimension mother abandoned her cub or was aggressive. "We had to have cub retrieval tools to remember the cub safely as we were not immune to go into the den with her," Tay explained.
The veterinary section readied the incubator room and paw-rearing equipment such as bottles and milk formula in case it needed to take over the rearing of the cub, she added.
When the cub was built-in on August 14, junior keeper Ivan Ang was so emotional that he cried. Tay was "over the moon" and heaved a huge sigh of relief when Jia Jia began caring for the newborn, picking it up gently and cradling it.
The new mother seemed more than tired in the get-go few days and would sigh when she had to wake up to attend to the cub, said Tay. Jia Jia nurses the cub and licks it to clean information technology and help it defecate, resting in between.
She did not eat much for the commencement two weeks and the caretakers kept her hydrated with an electrolyte glucose solution. After near 16 days, she started eating some leaves and is "doing groovy", said Tay.
The cub, which was revealed to be a boy at nigh iv weeks' sometime, has been growing and developing blackness-and-white markings. Pandas weigh 200 grams or less at birth and are bullheaded and pinkish.
They are considered contained when they are xviii months to two years old, and that is when the cub could say farewell to Jia Jia and head to Mainland china, said Dr Cheng Wen-Haur, deputy main executive of WRS.
WRS is in talks with the Chinese authorities to extend Kai Kai and Jia Jia'south stay beyond next year. Dr Cheng has said that if the extension comes through, it would let his team to plan for another breeding flavor for the pair.
Another roller-coaster ride, perhaps?
Catch the full episode of Talking Indicate: Hullo Panda! What Does It Take To Breed One? here . The program airs on Aqueduct 5 every Th at 9.30pm.
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