Taipei Zoo on Monday said that an autopsy on male giant panda Tuan Tuan (團團) confirmed that the animal had cerebral atrophy caused by a brain tumor prior to its death last month.
The 18-year-old panda was euthanized on Nov. 19 after its health deteriorated following a series of seizures in late August. Based on magnetic resonance imaging scans, doctors concluded that they had been brought on by a malignant brain tumor.
An autopsy was conducted on Tuan Tuan the day the panda died and the report was reviewed by a team of experts on Friday last week, zoo administrators told a news conference on Monday.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo
According to the report, Tuan Tuan had a gemistocytic astrocytoma — a type of primary tumor that affects the central nervous system — on the left side of the brain, which caused severe cerebral atrophy, the officials said.
Liu Chen-hsuan (劉振軒), head of the zoo’s veterinary team, said the extent of Tuan Tuan’s brain atrophy could be seen in the brain to body mass ratio, which at the time of death was 1:412, compared with 1:238 in healthy pandas.
The only other documented case of a panda developing a brain tumor in captivity was a 14-year-old female that died at Chengdu Zoo in China last year, Liu said.
However, that case involved a different type of tumor to the one Tuan Tuan had, he said.
Giant pandas can live for 15 to 20 years in the wild, but can live up to 30 years in captivity.
Tuan Tuan was one of two giant pandas that China gifted to Taiwan in 2008 to mark warming relations with Taipei at the time. The pandas were four years old when they arrived.
Then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) first offered the pandas to Taiwan as a token of friendship in May 2005 when then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) visited Beijing.
However, the gift was blocked by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which objected to China’s treatment of the panda transfer as a “domestic transfer” between zoos, because it implied that Taiwan is a part of China.
The issue was resolved under the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), which favored improving ties with China. Both sides sidestepped the country name issue by agreeing to identify the importer as “Taipei, Taiwan” and accepting “Chengdu, Sichuan” as the origin of export.
Tuan Tuan and his mate, Yuan Yuan (圓圓) — whose names together mean “reunion” in Chinese — had two cubs, Yuan Zai (圓仔) in 2013 and Yuan Bao (圓寶) in 2020.
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