Clouded leopard cub is not only beyond cute, but a conservation breakthrough
The Nashville Zoo was overcome with joy at the birth of a male clouded leopard on Wednesday. But it's not just because the tiny feline is adorable. He's also big step for the zoo and the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
The little guy, who is so new he has yet to be named, was the first of his species to be born from an artificial insemination procedure that used frozen (and eventually thawed) semen.
His mom, Tula, was born and raised at the Nashville Zoo. Veterinarians induced ovulation with hormones and deposited semen taken a week earlier from a male named Hannibal from the Smithsonian National Zoo.
The healthy birth from the frozen "cryopreserved semen" has implications for preserving future clouded leopards from all over the world. The animals are rare out in the wild and difficult to breed in captivity because they are so sensitive, zoo officials said.
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In 1992 the first successful artificial insemination for a clouded leopard had been a breakthrough. In 2015 more progress was made with cooled semen. This week the frozen semen technique helped make history.
The cub is initially being "hand-raised" by keepers and will stay on at the zoo, where they'll eventually find him a mate. Too cute.
Look for the days-old cub on the zoo's Facebook page where he makes his Facebook Live debut on Friday.
That's guaranteed to be too much cute for one screen to handle.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
