Panda mum mourns after crushing cub
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Giant panda Yinghua is grieving three days after the death of her first cub and is recovering in the delivery room of Beijing Zoo.
On July 3, at 4:45 am, when the little panda was lying on the lower jaw of her mother and making noises for milk, Yinghua responded to the sound by turning her head, accidentally squashing the little panda to death, said Zhang Jinguo, vice-president of the Beijing Zoo.
Zhang said staff at the zoo performed an autopsy on the cub and found internal bleeding in its right shoulder and liver, the Beijing Times reported.
"Yinghua doesn't have any experience in raising a child which was one of the reasons leading to the death of the cub," he said.
Ye Mingxia, a press officer with the zoo told METRO that since the death of the cub, Yinghua often scratches the floor with her paws and that her state of mind hasn't been stable.
She is still recovering from the tragedy in the delivery room, said Ye.
"We will try every possible means to help her recover soon. She is like a family. We really feel for her," Ye said.
Yinghua gave birth to two female pandas on the morning of July 2, the first baby pandas the zoo has had since 2007.
Yinghua abandoned her second baby because mother pandas only take care of one cub at a time, according to Zhang.
The zoo sent the second baby to Ya'an Panda Research Center in Sichuan province after its birth because it lacked the equipment to keep alive and raise the cub.
The baby panda in Sichuan is being fed with milk from its grandmother that the center had collected and frozen. It will eventually be sent back to the Beijing zoo, once it has grown strong enough.
All four female giant pandas in Beijing Zoo are more than five years old, which means they have reached sexual maturity, but have so far, with the exception of the recent births, failed to have babies due to pandas' difficulties in reproduction.
A female panda is in heat only once every year and 80 percent of female pandas don't develop mature eggs in captivity.
