Lovely, Lun Lun of Zoo Atlanta celebrates her birthday today, while at the same time experiencing a pregnancy or psuedopregnancy. As the zoo reports on their Lun Lun and cub update blog dated August 22, 2008, "Lun Lun is continuing to sleep the days away. About the only thing that has changed in the last few days is that as of yesterday, she has gone off eating her biscuits, apple and pear. Basically all she’s willing to eat is sugarcane, banana (without the peel) and a few handfuls of bamboo leaves. This is something that we want to see as she gets closer to a potential birth, as food intake becomes less of a priority."
More then likely they will update their blog today and you can be sure if Lun does have a cub, I will let you know ASAP here on PLO. I will be adding a small group of videos I took off the Zoo Atlanta videos site here shortly, showing the birth of her first panda cub, Mei Lan and followups. If Lun Lun does have another panda cub, you can watch her and the cub live on their live webcam site, just don't let your boss catch you!
Lun was born at the Chengdu Research Base, Chengdu, China. She has beautiful fluffy cheeks, which the Chinese consider a special trait in pandas. It looks like she passed those sweet traits on to her cub Mei Lan.
Lun's partner is Yang Yang who was also born at the Chengdu Base and has been together with Lun since he was 1 year old. They had their first cub in Atlanta on September 6, 2006.
So Lun Lun, you take care of yourself on this your 11th Birthday. Like all of our giant pandas bears in the U.S., you are special and we are blessed to have you with us in this crazy world today.
