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Can You Spot the Baby Panda in These Videos? (Update!)

Last week at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to her first cub "in seven years":http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/09/a-panda-cub-a-panda-cub-mei-xiang-gave-birth/. The little guy, who won't be named...

Last week at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to her first cub in seven years. The little guy, who won’t be named for 100 days according to Chinese tradition, is healthy and awaiting the day it will be big enough to be shipped back to China for breeding, as per an agreement. As of right now, however, the cub is basically just a tiny little ball of fur that’s spending most of its days crying and being smothered with love by its mother. That means that the videos the National Zoo has released on Flickr are basically black-and-white furry Where’s Waldos.

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Update: Well, this is a terrible update, but the baby panda has died, possibly from a liver defect.

This video from right after the birth shows Mei Xiang picking up the newborn cub in her mouth to move it around. All that squealing suggests the young cub is healthy.

In this shot, Mei Xiang cradles the cub in her arm in order to groom it. Like all new mothers, Mei Xiang apparently tries to score a couple minutes of sleep when she can before getting woken up by the crying cub.

It’s more or less the zoo equivalent of the Zapruder film, but you can just see a floppy white blob on top of Mei Xiang’s arm about halfway through this clip. That, folks, is a newborn panda! Cute, right?

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.