Twin panda cubs born in Spain after successful artificial insemination

A panda gave birth to twin cubs at a zoo in Spain Tuesday evening, Beijing time, a panda research body in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, said Wednesday.

The cubs, born at 7:39 p.m., and 9:13 p.m., respectively, were the first twin pandas born through artificial insemination outside of China, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding said.

The cubs' genders and weights were not immediately known.

Throughout the delivery, panda experts at the Chengdu base provided real-time guidance to zoo workers in Madrid via online video.

It was the first delivery for the mother panda, seven-year-old Hua Zuiba, whose name means "cutie lips."

Like all mother pandas of twin cubs, Hua Zuiba nursed only the first cub as her own and ignored the second, which was nursed by zoo workers instead.

Two experts from the Chengdu base are working with the Madrid Zoo on panda breeding research and will care for the panda mother and help nurse the cubs.

Hua Zuiba and Bing Xing, the 10-year-old father, were sent to Spain on a 10-year loan in 2007.

Though zoologists had hopes the duo would be soul mates, the couple never mated. Pandas are notoriously sex shy.

When Hua Zuiba was in oestrum in April, zoologists helped her conceive by artificially inseminating her with her partner's sperm. She was pregnant for about 135 days.

On Aug. 11, another panda from Chengdu gave birth to male-female twin cubs at Japan's Shirahama Animal Park.

Heroic panda mom Lun Lun is expected to give birth again at Zoo Atlanta this year.

Lun Lun's first cub Mei Lan, born in 2006, returned to China earlier this year. Her second cub, Xi Lan, was born in 2008.

Source: Xinhua