First panda born in Taiwan is female

The first cub born to a pair of pandas presented to Taiwan by the Chinese mainland is female, the Taipei Zoo announced on Sunday.

The baby panda is quite healthy, weighing about 183.4 grams, or only about one-thousandth the weight of its nine-year-old mother, zoo staff told a press conference.

The sex of the newborn cub could not be immediately identified, because its mother, Yuan Yuan, kept it around her after giving birth at 8:05 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Saturday.

Yuan Yuan delivered the cub after about two hours of labor, and she immediately held the cub in her mouth and placed it close to her, as shown in a video clip played at the press conference.

The cub, which has not yet been named, is being kept in an incubator, and her mother Yuan Yuan has been given vitamins and glucose as nutritional supplements. Calcium may also be given to Yuan Yuan if she nurses her daughter in the next one or two months, according to the zoo staff.

Born in 2004 in the Wolong National Nature Reserve in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Yuan Yuan and Tuan Tuan were chosen as goodwill gifts presented to Taiwan by the mainland in 2008.

Pandas are extremely difficult to breed, as they only have a two to three day window to conceive each year. Yuan Yuan was artificially inseminated three times from March 17 to 19.

After Yuan Yuan started to show signs of pregnancy on June 12, including eating less, sleeping more and being unusually cranky, the zoo's attendants confirmed her pregnancy.

Since July 2, two panda breeding experts from the mainland have being closely working with the Taipei Zoo on the pandas' first baby in Taiwan.

The zoo plans to take suggestions from the public for the newborn panda's name.