San Diego Zoo’s new panda cub is a boy

San Diego Zoo’s new panda cub is a boy

SAN DIEGO — The panda cub born at the San Diego Zoo nearly a month ago is a boy.

The zoo said the yet-to-be-named cub’s mother briefly left the den Thursday, allowing veterinarians to examine the 2.8-pound baby panda for the first time.

Senior zoo veterinarian Geoff Pye says the cub is healthy and starting to show its black-and-white markings. He says the cub has reached its “initial cute stage” and is “very roly poly.”

The tiny cub’s birth on Aug. 5 attracted so much traffic to the zoo’s Web site that the online Panda Cam camera feed crashed. The zoo’s blog also went down for a period.

On the Net:

San Diego Zoo, www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam