On Thursday, people will also have the chance to meet with National Zoo scientists and enjoy a full panda extravaganza day.
Animal Planet will provide kids with an opportunity to custom-make pet tags and will also have special "panda ears" to as a reminder to tune in to the premiere of
A Panda Is Born on December 10 at 8 p.m.
Featuring footage never before seen, the show will chronicle the past three seasons of panda mating at the National Zoo, culminating in Tai Shan's birth on July 9, at 3:41 a.m.
Giant pandas are black and white bears that live in temperate-zone bamboo forests in central China.
They are one of the world's most endangered species: as few as 1,600 giant pandas survive in the wild, another 120 are in Chinese breeding facilities and zoos, and about 20 live in zoos outside China.
With only a two- or three-day window in which a panda can become pregnant each year, giant panda births are exceedingly rare.
Tai Shan's mother, seven-year-old Mei Xiang, was artificially inseminated in March with sperm from Tian Tian, her seven-year-old zoo companion, after the zoo's staff determined that there had been no successful natural mating.
The pair are on a 10-year loan from China that began in 2000. The loan agreement establishes that Tai Shan must return to China when he is two years old, as all cubs born in the U.S. must.
Born pink and hairless, about the size of a stick of butter, Tai Shan is the first panda cub born at the National Zoo to survive more than a few days.
Five cubs were born during the 1980s to the zoo's previous pair of giant pandas, but none lived longer than five days. In keeping with tradition, the cub was not named until 100 days after its birth, when survival is considered assured.
Tai Shan, which means "peaceful mountain" in Chinese, was chosen from a list of names presented by the China Wildlife Conservation Association through an online poll, which pulled in more than 200,000 votes.
Since his birth July 9, more than than 7 million viewers around the world have followed Tai Shan's progress on the 24-hour panda cam at the zoo's Web site.
The five-month-old panda cub now weighs almost 22 pounds, interacts with everything the staff gives him — a pile of leaves, a cardboard box, a plastic ball — and obviously spends a lot of time with his 250-pound mother.
"When Mei Xiang returned, he followed her up onto the rocks and sat beside her 'eating' bamboo. What a little big boy, sitting like a tiny mirror image of his mother, pretending to eat bamboo," the zoo staff wrote in the Web diary.
The zoo's panda curators expect that he will start eating bamboo in a about a month: at the moment, he is solely consuming his mother's milk, and will continue to nurse for another year.
According to the zoo, panda fans will have other opportunities to view the panda cub "when we are confident that Tai is comfortable with crowds."
A very limited number of tickets for same-day viewing will be available daily at the zoo beginning December 8 on a first-come, first-served basis.
Name: Giant Panda (
Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
Primary Classification: Ursidae (Bears)
Location: The Sichuan, Gansu and Shanxi provinces in central China.
Habitat: Temperate bamboo forests.
Diet: Bamboo, almost exclusively.
Size: Up to 6 ft in length and 250 lbs in weight.
Description: Black fur on ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs and shoulders; white fur everywhere else; thick, woolly coat; broad, round face and flat nose; large molars; round, protruding ears; round body with short, sturdy limbs.
Cool Facts: Mothers will eat their cubs' stools to eliminate any evidence of their presence, thereby avoiding potential predators. They need to eat more than 22 lbs of bamboo per day to satisfy their daily requirement of nutrients.
Conservation Status: Endangered
Major Threat: Habitat loss and poaching.
What Can I Do?: Visit
Pandas International,
Smithsonian's National Zoo and
The Hong Kong Society for Panda Conservation for information on how you can help.
