For the first time, a giant panda cub has been born in China after being conceived using frozen sperm, officials announced on Friday — an innovation that scientists hope will help the endangered species avoid extinction.
The new cub’s birth on Thursday means that breeders will no longer be forced to rely on semen from China’s few virile males, and may even be able to bring in sperm from zoos in San Diego, Mexico City or elsewhere.
This would be key to promoting a healthy panda population because inbreeding can lead to birth defects that would further threaten the survival of the species.
The new cub, born to You You, a female panda at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in Sichuan Province, is the 10th born at the breeding facility this year. It was You You’s third.
Just after dawn, on footage broadcast by state television channel CCTV, the pinkish, hairless cub emerged, and its mother was shown licking the tiny wiggling creature to clean it.
Panda researchers said on Friday that it was the first successful live birth worldwide using frozen panda sperm.
“We did try before but it failed,” said Huang Yan, a deputy research technician with the China Panda Preservation Research Center.
He declined to elaborate but said the Wolong team had improved its thawing techniques, making frozen sperm more viable.
Sperm samples are deep-frozen using liquid nitrogen, and in the past, only 20 percent to 30 percent of the sperm survived. But this time the center managed to raise viability to about 80 percent, he said.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS