AlQa'dah 12, 1436, August 27, 2015, SPA -- The smaller of two panada cubs born over the weekend at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington died Wednesday, the zoo said, according to dpa. The cub died Wednesday afternoon after zoo official found that it had become weaker despite spending time with its mother, giant panda Mei Xiang, overnight. Mei Xiang gave birth to two cubs, hours apart, on Saturday at the zoo. "We were prepared for twins," veterinarian Don Neiffer said at a press conference. Female pandas often give birth to twins and frequently reject the smaller cub. Zoo officials had been swapping the cubs back and forth from an incubator to give each time with their mother. Neiffer detailed the efforts to regularly swap the cubs, but said the smaller cub had failed to gain weight. There had been no signs that the mother was concerned about the infant before it died, and the mother had tried to care for both cubs, he said. "Things turned and the cub's condition declined and despite extreme efforts by our dedicated staff we weren't able to change things," he said. "The larger cub appears to be strong, robust, behaving normally and is with mother Mei Xiang," the zoo said in a statement. Mei Xiang, 17, was artificially inseminated with sperm from two male pandas, one living in China and one living at the National Zoo. The paternity and gender of the cubs was not yet known. The cubs were the fifth and sixth for Mei Xiang. Two of her earlier cubs also did not survive. It will likely be four months before the surviving cub will venture from the den, giving visitors a glimpse of the zoo's newest panda. The cub, like siblings Bao Bao and Tai Shan, will spend four years at the zoo before being returned to China.
