INTERVIEW: Juan Rodriguez, one of the panda keepers at the National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution

• Panda pregnancy watch is on at Washington’s National Zoo. The National Zoo’s adult female giant panda has entered a critical phase in her months-long reproductive cycle, the zoo said Monday, suggesting that the cycle may conclude in a few weeks. The zoo said it doesn’t know if Mei Xiang is pregnant, because female pandas exhibit signs of pregnancy even when they are not pregnant. But zoo experts have detected the rise in Mei Xiang’s hormone levels that marks the final part of her cycle. Her hormone levels should rise for the next few weeks, and then come down, at which point she will either deliver a cub or have had a false pregnancy, the zoo said.
• NATIONAL ZOO: Giant Panda Mei Xiang’s Hormones Are Rising. Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) scientists have confirmed a secondary rise in giant panda Mei Xiang’s (may-SHONG) urinary progesterone levels. The slow rise started July 20 and indicates that she will either have a cub or experience the end of a pseudopregnancy within 30 to 50 days. Scientists have been carefully tracking Mei Xiang’s hormone levels since she was artificially inseminated April 26 and 27. The inseminations used frozen sperm collected from Hui Hui, a panda living in China, and fresh sperm collected from the National Zoo’s Tian Tian (tee-YEN tee-YEN). The Zoo’s panda team has been monitoring Mei Xiang very closely since the procedures. Veterinarians will continue regular ultrasounds as Mei Xiang chooses to participate in them. They are monitoring changes in her reproductive tract and evaluating for evidence of a fetus. The only way to definitively determine if a giant panda is pregnant is to detect a fetus on an ultrasound. Scientists will also continue to monitor her hormone levels through daily analyses