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Letter to the editor

The cycle of life

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 7, 2007

WHITE TIGER CUBS: All four white Bengal tiger cubs born this week at a traveling zoo exhibit died within a few hours of one another Thursday, a zoo official said. A cause of death was not immediately released. The cubs were born Tuesday to Gita and Splash, two royal white Bengal tigers on display at the Zoo Dynamics exhibit at the Mighty Thomas Carnival, which is traveling through Duluth, Minn. Marcus Cook, senior animal care specialist with Zoo Dynamics, said the cubs did not die as a result of care or zoo conditions, adding that they had been nursing. "It could be a million things that happened, even before conception, " Cook said.

PANDA CUBS: The National Zoo in Washington won't be hearing oohs and aahs over a new panda cub this year. Zoo officials said Friday that the giant panda Mei Xiang isn't pregnant after all. Her hormone levels had soared after she was artificially inseminated, then dropped last week, signaling a cub could be born. But an ultrasound showed no fetus, and zoo officials determined she wasn't pregnant. False pregnancies are common in pandas, and Mei Xiang has had four. Her only cub, Tai Shan, turns 2 on Monday.

Meanwhile in southwest China, a panda gave birth to twins, surprising researchers who were expecting only a single cub. The first-born was male and the sex of the second born was unknown because the mother would not let it out of her grip after the Thursday birth, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

[Last modified July 7, 2007, 00:35:53]