SAN DIEGO — Out of 6,300 suggestions from panda fans around the world, San Diego Zoo managers have chosen a name for a baby panda born this summer. The 3-month-old, 13.2-pound ball of black-and-white fur was named Yun Zi, or "Son of Cloud" in Chinese, after his mother, Bai Yun, whose name means "White Cloud," zoo officials said.
The name was announced at a ceremony attended by hundreds of panda lovers.
The cub was born on Aug. 5 at the zoo but, in keeping with Chinese tradition, wasn't named for 100 days.
The bamboo-eating bears are an endangered species native to China.
Yun Zi, who weighed just 4 ounces at birth, is the fifth cub born to his mother. There are only 14 giant pandas in the United States, including five at the San Diego Zoo.
Yun Zi's birth was posted on the zoo blog and a "panda cam" that allowed people to see the cub in a zoo den was so popular that it briefly crashed.
"This giant panda cub has been embraced worldwide," zoo Chief Executive Officer Douglas Myers said in a statement. "Yun Zi and the other pandas are ambassadors to conservation. The pandas help us here, at the San Diego Zoo connect people to wildlife around the world."
Yun Zi was chosen from among five Chinese names during a four-day poll that attracted more than 17,500 votes on the zoo's Web site. The other names meant "blissful San Diego;" "little dragon;" "extraordinary bear" and "eternally blessed."
The cub is starting
to show a rambunctious personality and so "little dragon" would have been fitting, zoo spokeswoman Yadira Galindo said in a zoo blog.
"In the end, the name that was bestowed upon this bear is one that pays tribute to an extraordinary mother," she wrote.
Pandas are notoriously poor breeders, even in the wild where only about 1,600 are thought to remain. Around 200 are in captivity.
But Bai Yun has given birth to five cubs since arriving at the zoo in 1996, including the first surviving giant panda born in the United States, in 1999. Two of the cubs are in China.
The father is her longtime consort Gao Gao, or "Big Big", who fathered three of her other cubs.
Douglas Myers, right, CEO of the Zoological Society of San Diego, with the assistance of Sun Weide, left, Vice Consul General from the Chinese Consulate, Berit Durler, President of the Zoological Society, and Ron Swaisgood, Ph.D. , co-head of the San Diego Zoo's Giant Panda Conservation Unit, announces the name given to the newest giant panda born at the zoo during a news conference Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009 in San Diego. The Panda, born Aug. 5 this year was named Yun Zi, which means "Son of Cloud". source: www.mercurynews.com
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