Breeding Our 1st Panda Cub: Behind The Scenes In Singapore Zoo – River Safari | Talking Point

Eat, sleep, poop, repeat. Life in captivity for these giant pandas is easy-peasy all year round, except during breeding season. Kai Kai, what we did for him was we actually conditioned him to do a sports exercise. We collect urine from Jia Jia. Once breeding season hits, we get every single sample we can from her. And after seven years of trying, Singapore finally welcomes its first baby panda at the River Safari. Growing up, the Singapore Zoo was like a second home to me. I mean, I used to spend almost every weekend there because of my father's work. I remember when the first pandas arrived in Singapore. An An and Xin Xin, way back in 1990. But they were only here for 100 days. To mark the start of official diplomatic ties between Singapore and China, you could say they were diplomatic envoys. Well, An An and Xin Xin eventually returned home, but in 2012, we received another pair as reaffirmation of our bilateral ties, Jia Jia and Kai Kai. This time, they are here on a 10-year loan, and a crucial task for the River Safari was to get the pandas to breed. In this episode, I give you an inside look into the great lengths it took to get Jia Jia to successfully conceive. But first, a crash course on pandas. There's an estimated 1,864 giant pandas in the wild, and 633 in captivity. They're no longer classified as endangered, but they're still vulnerable, which means they still face a high risk of extinction in the wild because wild pandas remain scattered and are threatened by massive habitat loss. But panda breeding is no mean feat. Of the 23 zoos that house giant pandas outside of China today, only nine have been successful in breeding cubs. So in 2009, when the pandas' arrival was announced, the pandas' care team knew that they would have their work cut out for them. Pandas are solitary creatures that need ample space on their own, so Jia Jia and Kai Kai need to be kept apart. Unless it's mating time. Then they are brought together. So the first order of the day, creating the panda's home, which has separate spaces for each panda. Because pandas' breeding cycles respond to China's changing seasons, temperature here needs to be maintained at 18 to 22 degrees Celsius. Temperature controlled to simulate China's spring season. Also, the start of their mating season. Champ Tadian was part of the team that created the procreation paradise. The key thing is the thermal comfort of the bear, which has to be 18 to 22 degrees, air-conditioned. And we try to create a habitat that allows the bears the most choices. For example, other than eating and resting, in their favourite place, they have the option to climb, to take a dip in a pool. So how much did it cost to build all of this? This whole facility cost us slightly over $8 million. How does all of this lead to a higher chance of successful panda breeding? We did learn a lot from the Chinese expert on the little details. Just having a window here between the two. Oh, I see that. Kai Kai and Jia Jia, they are separated by this. So they actually smell and see each other, but it's just for them to get used to each other. Because they are only together during the mating period. And it boils down to luck. The two pandas may not like each other in the first place. With the physical infrastructure ready, the mission to breed was on. But first, the team had to wait for the pandas to mature, especially for Jia Jia to reach her first oestrus cycle, which marks the start of reproduction in animals. Tricia Tay is the lead animal care officer. She's taken care of the pandas since day one and had been studying for more than three years how to ensure a successful first mating. But she knew the odds were up against her. How did your team prepare the pandas to mate when they arrived in Singapore? At the end of 2014, we adjusted the photo period and the temperature in the panda complex to follow that of the seasonal changes, similar to what it is in their natural habitat. So that resulted in Jia Jia having her first oestrus in 2015. So in order to determine the oestrogen levels, what we did is that we had to collect her urine. And so we also conditioned her for urine collection. When you mean condition Jia Jia for urine collection, you're training her to collect her urine sample? Yes, that's right. She usually comes down after a nap to urinate at the weighing scale. So what we did is we conditioned her by giving her a cue. And whenever she urinated, she received a reward. So she's quite a smart bear. So she would pick it up pretty fast. There's a lot of talk about the oestrogen and the hormones. So how important is hormones to pandas? It is very, very important. Because female pandas are only fertile for 24 to 48 hours once a year. Which means you have to get the timing exactly right. So in order to do so, you need to know when her oestrogens peak and start declining. If you miss that period, you just have to wait for another year. Oh my goodness! 17th April 2015 was Jia Jia and Kai Kai's first mating season. Fifteen zoo staff were mobilised. They had to get the two pandas together in the same den for the first time ever and make sure they ease into each other's presence. They also had to track Jia Jia's urine more frequently to catch the elusive 48-hour oestrogen peak. The panda team of carers did everything they could. But there was one thing they didn't anticipate. I've been tracking what it took to conceive our first made-in-Singapore baby panda. It's 17th April 2015. The panda care team at the zoo were in eager anticipation. It was Jia Jia and Kai Kai's first mating season. But it turns out, Kai Kai had no idea how to mate. Despite their sexual attraction with each other, Kai Kai just didn't know how to... get it on. It's typical for first-timers, especially captive pandas without role models to learn from. Nature just wasn't taking its course. And with Jia Jia's hormones falling, the team made a crucial decision. With few hours left on the fertility window, it was time for artificial insemination. With Kai Kai sedated, his semen samples were collected. Artificial insemination involves either injecting fresh or thawed frozen semen directly into Jia Jia's cervix during ovulation. Jia Jia is anaesthetised during the procedure. The vets have to administer the right amount of drug. Too little, she might wake up in the middle of the procedure. Too much, and she might overdose. But just an 18.5% chance of success with artificial insemination, the first attempt to breed proved... Learning from the failures of the first mating season, the panda care team went back to the drawing board and strategised for the next season. Okay, what's going on here? This is enrichment. What do you mean by enrichment? Enrichment is something we do for animals to enhance their natural behaviour. Okay, this one, right? Inside, we're going to put straw or hair to stimulate their sensory. Because Kai Kai loves to rub his body on the straw. Right. And then, inside also, we put some pellets. He's going to manipulate it and find other ways to get the pellets out from this. Ah, okay. So, does enrichment help with the mating process? Usually, the enrichment we do for Kai Kai, for mating, we tie it higher from the ground. Perhaps we can tie bamboo on top of a very high tree, so it will stimulate Kai Kai to climb. And then, that will strengthen his hind legs and his stamina. We do squat training as well. Daily squat training for twice a week. It's like going to the gym. Interesting! During the mating, the male panda will moult on the female panda. So, that's why he needs stamina for a prolonged period. For position. Yeah, position. So, that one is to strengthen his leg muscles, his hind legs, to have a more successful mating. Looking at Kai Kai, I just can't imagine him doing squats. Yes. He likes to lie down on his back and eat bamboo, right? He will sigh every time we want to do the squats. I love it! Another measure we do, right, is swapping the pee. For example, Kai Kai's pee, we put in Chacha's as a bit, and Chacha's pee, we will put in Kai Kai's as a bit. So, Kai Kai will go to his as a bit, and he will sniff Chacha's pee all over the as a bit. And what does that help with? Stimulate him like he knows there's a female around. Because in the wild, they pick up sand, and then they will go and find the female. That's what we're going to do here. We're going to make him interested in Chacha. So, increase the chances of a successful meeting. It's like, hmm, it's not so nice. Yeah, it's true. Get him hyped up. Interesting, interesting. You know, I've also heard of something called Panda Plot. We just show Kai Kai how the panda do it. The mating. But Kai Kai is not interested. Oh, I see. So, Kai Kai, he prefers to be stimulated in other ways. Yes. Wow. High class, this one. For the next five years, the pandas went through breeding boot camp, hormone tracking, leg squat training, and even some panda porn thrown in. But nothing seemed to work. The pandas weren't mounting successfully. Neither did Chacha's eggs fertilise from the insalination. Then came 2021, six years after the first mating attempt. This year's breeding season, the panda team brought the pandas together as usual. They tried and tried. But after 24 hours, hopes of natural mating rapidly slipped away. So, it's back to the surgery room for artificial insemination. I want to know what's being done differently for this round of insemination on 24th April. We went for it at the 47th hour of the ovulation window. The procedure itself was exactly the same. But we were a lot more confident and comfortable with the procedure because of the years of being guided by various experts. Also, the procedure this year was extremely smooth. Sometimes we get all kinds of complications. Her bladder may be too full, there's urine contamination, things like that. We didn't have any of that this year. We were way below an hour on anesthetic time. And when we finished the process of insemination, we repositioned her. To tilt her back slightly higher up to have gravity help with the flow of semen. So, we keep her in this position for a good 10 to 15 minutes. This time, we had a very accurate placement of the semen into the productive tract of Jia. How did you achieve that accurate placement this year? One is having very good diagnostic imaging tools. So, it was an ultrasound-guided semen placement. We could see exactly where we were depositing the semen. With the insemination complete, the wait begins. Days turn to weeks. And then, months. But there was really no way to tell if she was pregnant because false pregnancies are common amongst pandas under human care. But, on the 10th of August, 108 days after the insemination, Dr. Heng Ee Rui saw something moving in the uterus. What were the exact signs that you were looking out for after the artificial insemination procedure? In July, that's what we saw. So, this is the cervix. The cervix measures 2.63 centimetres. It's absolutely no different from previous years. What was the actual confirmation? On the 10th of August, just as we were about to end the scan, we saw some strange abnormalities. There was more fluid in the uterus and there was something that was moving in the uterus itself. And that turned out to be the heart. How did you feel when you saw this? Is that real? Is that really what it is? Am I seeing things? And I didn't want to tell the caretakers that were keeping Chia quiet and happy whilst I did the ultrasound scan because I didn't want to get them too excited. But it was only until I ended the scan and closed my machine that I told them, hey, I think our girl is pregnant. And everyone was visibly so happy, so ecstatic. From the point of detection of a fetal heartbeat, Panda would usually be born in seven days. So, that's all the time you have to get prepared to receive a Panda baby. Oh my goodness! Seven days? During this scan, I sort of knew that this would be the last scan that we would ever do with her. There are reports in other zoos where Pandas are pregnant and because of the stress that they go through during this period, sometimes the mother would resorb the baby. It was very intentional that we didn't want to stress her too much. You mean that if a Panda gets too stressed while she's pregnant, she might have a miscarriage? Yes. Right, okay. It's like absorbing the baby, but it's resorbing because it's taking it back. So, I guess resorb. Right. Just four days after the pregnancy was confirmed, this happened. The team was ecstatic, but celebrations were cut short because there was still a great risk to both mum and cub. On 14th August at 7.50am, a Panda cub was born in Singapore's River Safari. But the next few seconds were crucial. All eyes were on Chia Chia in case she turned aggressive or abandoned her cub. But as the mother picked up the baby with her mouth, they could finally be at ease. The cub was in good paws. How is Chia Chia growing into her role as a new mother? In the first few days, we made her more tired. So, when the cub calls and she has to attend to it, she would give huge sighs when she had to wake up. We had to rouse her and make sure that she was waking up and attending to the cub. She wasn't eating much for the first two weeks or more. We had to keep her hydrated, so we made an electrolyte glucose solution and offered it to her. Thankfully, after about 16 days or so, she started eating a handful of leaves and her mouth started increasing. That's amazing. What's the condition of Chia Chia right now? She's doing great. As she progressed, she realised that she had to help to nurse the cub and lick the cub to help to clean it and to help it defecate. She realised that when she spent more time doing that, she could actually rest for longer periods of time. She's a smart bear, so she picks this up and she slowly got into a routine of just caring for the cub and then resting for extended periods of time. Speaking of the little cub, how is the little one doing? The little one is actually doing really well. We see it growing. Definitely, in terms of the black and white markings are coming in as well. It has a fat belly most of the time, so we're really happy to see it growing and putting on weight. Penn cubs are born blind, without fur, and weigh on average a mere 200 grams. That's one out of one thousandth the weight of an adult panda. They're born so tiny because female pandas have a very low metabolism and poor levels of oxygen in their blood. The cub needs to exit the womb to get more oxygen and fast. At this stage, a cub's gender is unknown as the genitalia is not developed. But by four to six weeks, the cub's gender is known. It's 10th September 2021, and the River Safari is celebrating Papa Panda Kai Kai's birthday. The River Safari has a celebration planned, and I hear a very special announcement. And it's a boy! After all that celebration, I want to know what the future holds for Chacha and Kai Kai, as well as the little boy. Dr Cheng Wen Ho oversees the team in charge of Singapore's panda breeding programme. So what's the significance of the successful birth of the panda cub? For Singapore, it's such good news and allows the country to rejoice and celebrate this achievement that we can be proud of, which is technologically and biologically complicated. Yes, seven years, seven attempts, and finally the successful birth. Correct. So what's next for the panda family? Well, we follow the natural history of the giant panda. So a cub, when he's about 18 months to two years old, they're considered independent. So around that stage, we'll be allowing the cub to say goodbye to his mother. He will go back to China to start his reproductive programme. And we are coming up to the end of the first term of the stay for Kai Kai and Chacha. So we are now in talk with the Chinese authority. We would like for both Chacha and Kai Kai to stay another term with us. So we will wait and see the outcome of that. Fantastic. We got to know that they took seven years to produce a child. And guess what? Amazingly, they produced Kai Kai and Chacha. Congratulations. We've been waiting for so long. I can't wait to have three pandas in the enclosure. I know they've been trying for a very long time. Yeah, so I'm very happy that their efforts paid off. The big double happy news. The arrival baby is on August, our Singapore National Day month. So we actually make a panda and we make it into a gift. And we actually deliver to the river safari. I think that for them to be able to procreate in one of the world-class facility environment, I think it's a big achievement for the Singapore Zoo in whole. It's been a long road to the birth of Singapore's first panda cub. It took an entire team of experts and a lot of hard work for us to finally say we've got our own made-in-Singapore giant panda. So cute.