eight months pass...
two years pass...
Rare red pandas pass critical milestone
Jeff Holubitsky
edmontonjournal.com
Friday, August 10, 2007
EDMONTON - Animal health technician Sandy Helliker is quick to deflect the praise she deserves for the sleepless nights she's spent on the couch to be near the Edmonton's rare red panda cubs.
"Nobody can do as good a job as mom does," she said today, as the Valley Zoo showed off the fuzzy pair, now with open eyes and a growing curiosity in the world around them. "There is always concern when there is something that small that you have to raise."
The cubs, born June 26 and growing like weeds, now weigh about five times their birth weights of about 150 grams.
But their first month of life was critical, as one was treated with antibiotics for an infection, and they had to be fed with tubes into their stomachs to avoid sucking a special milk formula into their tiny lungs.
"For the full period I've had them, that was probably of the most concern to me," she said.
The zoo is now confident they will survive and is asking for public help to name the pair, tentatively believed to be a smaller male and slightly larger female. Entries can be submitted electronically to attracti✧✧✧@edmon✧✧✧.c✧. The winner will receive a family pass to the zoo and an change to meet the cubs.
Helliker currently feeds them by bottle and is more than happy to say they now allow her about seven hours of sleep a night. Their earlier schedule demanded feeds every three hours.
The rare red pandas, of the styani subspecies, are considered the most genetically diverse and therefore most important cubs of their species in North America. Other cubs were also born this year at zoos in Winnipeg and Calgary.
They are all part of an international breeding program that should eventually reintroduce red pandas into Himalayan forests in India, Nepal and China.
Helliker said the cubs will soon move from being bottle fed to drinking milk from a bowl. After that, they will start eating biscuits soaked with formula and she expects them to be weaned by the time they are about 4 1/2 years old.
At that time they will begin a life-long diet of bamboo from the Muttart Conservatory, fruits and vegetables. Though carnivorous by classification, the pandas will be vegetarian in practice.
Eventually, they will live in a specially designed enclosure that was renovated when their seven-year-old parents, about the size and shape of raccoons, came from a zoo in Japan. The facility has both indoor and outdoor areas for the animals, separate quarters for males and females, and monitoring cameras.
Hellicker is careful not to bond too closely with the cubs. The zookeepers will try to ensure they maintain wild behaviours because they will be expected to breed with red pandas at other zoos.
But as Helliker holds the babies, it's evident she's as enthralled by their development as any mother, surrogate or not. She said the cubs are beginning to stand on their own and she's waiting for their tentative first steps.
"One is a little more outgoing that the other, but they are still going to change a lot," she said. "I find this very rewarding."
― gershy, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 06:48 (eighteen years ago)
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