@HappyDaze wrote:
@surfk wrote:
Sometimes it can be a sad yet simple case of the runt dying or the mother just refusing to feed it.
But often, there is a reason that the mother refuses a cub or newborn. Its not always just because there are two (or a litter). Often, a mother can sense that the rejected newborn has some other problem with it.
Its some deep instinctual thing which many animals possess - a sense of something we can't see or yet measure or gauge. But they sense it from birth.
So while it is sad, even bottle feeding it demonstrates that the little cub was perhaps weaker than merely a runt or a rejected or neglected offspring.
I recall just a couple of years ago a beloved young zoo animal - not a newborn or baby, (I can't remember if it was a polar bear ??) died suddenly.
It had some sort of a previously undetected medical condition which caused its surprising early death.
And yet, after it died the zookeepers mentioned or recalled that it had been, interestingly-enough, rejected by its mother at birth years before.
Sometimes Nature still knows more than even advanced experts or science can tell us about things.
Not with pandas. It is actually an odd phenomenon with them and has nothing to do with anything being wrong with one of the cubs. The survival rate of panda cubs is very low due to the often indifference of the mother to nuture the babies or simply clumsiness. And when they have twins, they often only nuture one but if scientists switch them out without the mother knowing, she will unknowingly nuture both equally. Often times they have no interest in any of them.
They will often times crush them as well by accidentally rolling on them. This is one other reason why pandas survival is questionable. The mothers often have no interest in nuturing their own healthy babies.
That is not neceesarily or assuredly accurate particularly in regard to pandas raised in captivity.
Even twin pandas have a very high survival rate - nearly the same as a single born panda.
In fact, as I sensed - and stated - the second cub is said to have suffered a medical condition which caused its death. It was not neglect or the mother refusing to nurse it necessarily.
The first clue was that such happens as a mother animal does indeed sense something is wrong with its offspring. Even if she so-called "helps it along" into death, there may be a reason for that.
The second clue is that the second cub still died despite feedings from zoo staff and also receiving probably the finest treatment available to any animal in captivity anywhere.
There have been actually dozens of twin pandas born in captivity over the past several decades. And almost all of them survived into adulthood.
The mystery as to what happened to this second cub will be made more clear after its autopsy. But pandas aren't psychopathic mothers. Even if the second panda may have received injuries while in its mother's care, it doesn't mean that the cub didn't have some medical issue which the mother detected or sensed intuitively. It is nature's way.
If it were merely a case of all panda mothers killing their second offspring, due to a panda's inability or disinterest in caring for more than one, the zoo never would have even attempted to
"switch" it with the stronger cub. It would just be a well established fact that the smaller cub would be in terrible peril with such a mother.
And it didn't survive even in the care of zoo experts despite the fact that most twins in captivity do survive. So something strange occurred in this situation. Something probably medical since the other theories would be that Xei Xiang is a killer panda mom or the zookeepers at the National Zoo don't know what they're doing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-national-zoos-giant-panda-twins-are-special-to-dc-but-twin-c...
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