Giant panda in Washington's National Zoo gives birth to twin

The Smithsonian National Zoological Park said here late Saturday its female panda has given birth to the second of a twin cubs.

Mei Xiang, one of the two adult giant pandas which arrived here from China on Dec. 6, 2000, gave birth to a second cub at 10:07 p.m. local time (1407 GMT), the zoo confirmed in a short statement on its Twitter account.

Mei Xiang had already given birth to the first of the twin at 5:35 p.m. local time (0935 GMT), the zoo confirmed in an earlier statement on Saturday.

Should the twins survive, they would be the 17-year-old panda's third and fourth surviving offspring since her introduction to the National Zoo 15 years ago.

Keepers from the zoo will be watching closely the twins in the coming days and it would also take several days for experts to determine their gender.

Mei Xiang gave birth to her first cub Tai Shan on July 9, 2005 and then her second cub Bao Bao on Aug. 23, 2013. Apart from the two surviving cubs, Mei Xiang gave birth to another stillborn cub in 2013, and in 2012, she gave birth to a cub that died six days later.

Earlier Saturday afternoon, the zoo said a large number of viewers seeking to watch the panda's birth caused overload to its online live feed.

For enthusiastic fans of the panda family now residing in the U.S. capital city, however, they are not expected to see the twins very soon. Bao Bao, Mei Xiang's second surviving cub, made her public debut about five months after the birth.

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C. is one of four zoos in the country to have pandas on loan from China. However, the pandas still belong to China. Tai Shan, Mei Xiang's first surviving cub, now lives in China, and Bao Bao will return to China after turning four years old.