Giant panda very ill

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 6

Giant panda very ill

NZPA-AP Washington

Ling-Ling, America’s female panda whose years of difficult mating took a tragic turn when her cub died in her arms, is seriously ill from kidney failure and anaemia, and National Zoological Park specialists said yesterday that her chances of recovery were very poor.

“It’s difficult to say how long she can survive,” said Dr Mitchell Bush, the zoo’s chief veterinarian. LingLing was being treated with antibiotics and may undergo short-term kidney dialysis. “She’s very sick right now, and the illness and complications could lead to her death.

“The possibility of longterm dialysis is not feasible,” he said, referring to the medical technique of cleansing the blood artificially when a kidney is defective.

Hsing-Hsing, the. zoo’s male panda and Ling-Ling’s reluctant consort, is healthy and in no danger of contracting her illness, which is not contagious. She has been given an emergency transfusion of Hsing-Hsing’s blood.

Dr Bush said that LingLing’s illness might have been caused by her longawaited pregnancy, which ended in July when she gave birth to a cub, the first panda to be born in the United States. The cub died

three hours later while cradled in its mother’s arms, the victim of fluid in its chest cavity. He said that Ling-Ling had been treated with antibiotics for an infection after her delivery, and responded well. She did not seem to be in pain. Indeed, before a news conference Ling-Ling could be seen seated in her heated panda palace at the zoo, munching on raw carrots and bamboo, expertly stripping away the moist leaves and spitting out the stalks.

Photographers waited impatiently to take pictures, but Ling-Ling deftly turned her back to them and watched some enterprising

sparrows vie for her breakfast.

“Her kidney failure ■is very perplexing because she doesn’t look that sick,” Dr Bush said. “Basically, she looks a lot better than the data in the lab tests shows.”

Zoo officials said that a giant panda’s life expectancy was about 20 years. Ling-Ling is believed to be aged about 14. . Hsing-Hsing and LingLing were given to the United States by the People’s Republic of China during President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1972. They are the only giant pandas in America, and are among the 15 or 16 known to be in captivity outside China.