Panda cub dies within week of birth

A PANDA born at a Japanese zoo has died of pneumonia, less than a week after its much-awaited birth was greeted with widespread excitement.

The cub was found motionless and without a heartbeat on his mother’s tummy and moved to an incubator, but efforts to revive it failed, officials at Tokyo’s Ueno zoo said.

“It appears that when the baby was being breastfed, it may have inhaled some milk, which caused pneumonia,” zoo director Toshimitsu Doi told a news conference yesterday before choking up and wiping his face with a handkerchief. The panda’s mother, Shin Shin, arrived from China in February 2011 with partner Ri Ri. The two went on view to the public soon after a devastating earthquake and tsunami the following month, providing Japan with some upbeat news for a change.

Hopes for a cub began after the two pandas were recorded on camera mating earlier this year, and the seven-year-old Shin Shin gave birth on 5 July. It was the first panda birth at Ueno zoo in 24 years.

The baby’s growth was followed by the media on a daily basis, with TV footage showing the tiny, white-haired cub wriggling in an incubator or being cradled to its mother’s chest. Visitors flocked to the zoo.

“We’re really saddened by this,” said Yutaka Fukuda, the zoo’s deputy director.