Captive Breeding

Break out the cigars: The San Diego zoo's newest panda is a boy. A zoo veterinarian got the first chance to handle the 3-week-old cub Wednesday when its mother, Bai Yun, left the birthing den for a few minutes. The unnamed cub weighed 19 ounces and measured 10 inches from nose to tail. "The cub is doing exceptionally well," said Meg Sutherland-Smith, the San Diego Zoo's senior veterinarian who handled the newborn panda.

Giant panda Bai Yun had not given birth to a second cub at the San Diego Zoo as of Wednesday afternoon, more than 24 hours after successfully delivering the cub's twin, zoo officials said. Giant pandas pregnant with twins usually deliver the second cub within 12 hours of giving birth to the first. Zoo officials acknowledged that it is unlikely that Bai Yun will deliver a healthy second cub. "That doesn't mean we're not hopeful," zoo spokesman Paul Garcia said.

Giant panda Bai Yun gave birth to a cub Tuesday afternoon at the San Diego Zoo and another was on its way by evening. The first twin was born in the panda's birthing den at 1:14 p.m.; the second was expected to arrive by early this morning. Both mother and baby were doing well, zoo employees said. Zoo officials haven't announced the gender or weight of the as-yet-unnamed baby panda. They aren't sure who the father is.

Nobody knows exactly how long giant panda Bai Yun has been pregnant, and there is some question about who the father is. Still, officials at the San Diego Zoo were beaming like expectant parents Monday, eagerly awaiting the birth of black-and-white twins due this month. If all goes well, the birth would mark a rare success in panda reproduction, and also could help the zoo boost attendance.

Veterinarians at SeaWorld have, for the first time, produced two bottlenose dolphins by using once-frozen sperm to artificially inseminate their mothers. Officials at the theme park announced Thursday that the two calves, one male and one female, had been born in May to bottlenose dolphins who had been impregnated with sperm from a dolphin used by the U.S. Navy. Previously, bottlenose dolphins have been bred through artificial insemination with fresh semen.

When wildlife authorities entered the grounds of Jon Weinhart's home in April and found scores of dead and malnourished tigers, they opened a window into what some experts describe as an underground industry in exotic pets. Weinhart, the owner of a wildlife facility called Tiger Rescue, and his partner, Marla Smith, were charged with illegally breeding tigers and keeping a menagerie of big cats in unhealthy conditions.

Avian specialists from the San Diego Zoo will assist scientists in Hawaii in a last-ditch effort to save one of the world's rarest birds, the po'ouli, found only on the slopes of Haleakala Volcano in Maui, Hawaii. Only two females and one male are known to exist. The zoo, which has a program to help save Hawaii's endangered forest bird species, will be part of a captive breeding program in Hawaii.

Deep in the Los Padres National Forest, where plunging canyons meet towering sandstone pinnacles, the first in a new generation of California condors toddles around a small cave, flapping its stubby wings. Across the valley, biologist Mike Barth peers through a telescope. "My nightmare," he says, squinting in the sun, "is that chick will take its first flight up that canyon and right into a power line."

The first California condor brooded and hatched in the wild in 18 years was stained with oil this week, raising concerns about the chick's long-term health and the effect on the ambitious, $35-million program to reintroduce the huge black birds into the wilderness. Biologists observing the chick in Los Padres National Forest near Fillmore say the father apparently stuck its own head in a puddle of crude oil, then flew back to the nest where the oil got on the chick's white, downy feathers.

He weighs a manageable 23 pounds but will grow to at least 275. He looks cuddly and cute, but his teeth will grow to 3 inches long. And someday he will be strong enough to kill a person with a slap of his paw. None of that mattered to Cai Murrah, 5, who waited in the cold for more than 40 minutes for a look at Berani, the National Zoo's latest star. Cai, in town with his family from Kentucky to visit his grandmother for the holidays, said he just wanted to see the new cat in town.