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Report: World's only captive brown and white panda dies |
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September 9, 2000
BEIJING, SEPT 8 (AP) - The world's only brown and white panda living in captivity has died at the age of 29, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. The panda, named Dan Dan by her caretakers, had been ailing for years with cataracts and other health problems and was diagnosed with cancer in May, Xinhua reported late Thursday. Her condition deteriorated on Sept. 1 when she began suffering spasms and became unable to stand or eat and she died Thursday after falling into a coma, Xinhua said. Dan Dan was discovered in Foping county in central Shaanxi province in 1985 and had lived ever since in a zoo in the central city of Xi'an. Although her coat was an unusual brown and white, she gave birth in 1989 to a male cub, Qin Qin, that was black and white, the panda's typical coloration. The giant panda is indigenous only to China and about 1,000 of the animals remain in the wild, scattered through reserves in the western and central provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. China has made strenuous efforts to preserve what have virtually become national emblems. They continue to be threatened however by loss of habitat, poaching and the animal's low reproductive rate. Zoologists from China's giant panda breeding research center in western Sichuan province took samples of skin, internal organizations and other tissue from the dead Panda for genetic research, Xinhua said. |