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 Welcome to the Smithsonian's National Zoo's Panda Cams, where you can watch giant pandas Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Bei Bei. 
 
 While you are watching pandas chomp on bamboo, play in trees and tumble in the grass, specially trained volunteers with Friends of the National Zoo are hard at work using these cameras to collect behavioral data on the giant pandas. Please note that while the cameras stream live 24 hours a day, FONZ volunteer operators will only be following the pandas during regular business hours. 
 
 Be sure to toggle back and forth between Panda Cam 1 and Panda Cam 2 using the tabs at the top of the video player to get the full Panda Cam experience. 

 National Zoo panda Mei Xiang gave birth Saturday afternoon just days after zoo officials confirmed she was pregnant. A few hours later the zoo's panda cam showed her playing with the newborn. (Smithsonian National Zoo) 
 
 National Zoo panda Mei Xiang gave birth Saturday afternoon just days after zoo officials confirmed she was pregnant. A few hours later the zoo's panda cam showed her playing with the newborn. (Smithsonian National Zoo) 
 
 The giant panda at the National Zoo gave birth to two cubs a few hours apart Saturday, launching a fresh and not totally unexpected chapter in the public romance with the rotund black-and-white bears that have enthralled Washington and legions of panda fanatics for 43 years. 
 
 Giant pandas give birth to twins about half the time, a zoo official said. 
 
 After the first birth, Pamela Baker-Masson, the zoo’s spokeswoman, said the staff was “thrilled, absolutely thrilled.” 
 
 “I’ve been in close communication with veterinarians, the scientists, keepers. Everybody’s extremely happy,” she said. “We were all tuned in to the panda cam, and we saw her water break. And then just about an hour later . . . she gave birth to a cub.” 
 
 The second cub was born at 10:07 p.m., Baker-Masson said. It was believed to be healthy, she said late Saturday night. 
 
 1 of 31 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Mei Xiang gives birth to two cubs hours apart View Photos The birth launches a fresh chapter in the public romance with the bears that have enthralled Washington for 43 years. Caption The newborn is the survivor of two cubs born to mother Mei Xiang in August. The smaller cub died four days after birth. Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 One of the two was retrieved, following a special protocol for rearing twins, another zoo spokeswoman said. It was placed in an incubator. It was not clear which of the two cubs it was. 
 
 However, the zoo said, both cubs would be given the opportunity to bond with their mother. The zoo’s “panda team” would alternate the cubs between maternal and incubator rearing. One will be nursing and spending time with the mother, while the other would be fed by bottle and kept warm in the incubator. 
 
 Authorities were alerted to the second birth through watching a video feed of the panda habitat. 
 
 It occurred quickly, more rapidly than the day’s first birth, Baker-Masson said. 
 
 The loud vocalizations from the first cub after birth were a “great sign for good health,” said Baker-Masson, who added that staffers watched with awe as the mother picked up her cub, about the size of a stick of butter. 
 
 Inside the panda house Saturday afternoon, a small, rapt knot of onlookers watched on a video monitor as Mei Xiang tossed and turned in her cage. About 4:30 p.m., zoo officials confirmed that the panda’s water had broken. 
 
 Susan Powell, 51, had been standing with her son and granddaughter as Mei Xiang labored on the black-and-white screen. Powell, who was visiting her son from her home outside of Magnolia, Ark., said the event was a rare treat. 
 
 “In south Arkansas, we don’t have anything like this,” she said. “We get deer and foxes, but not pandas.” 
 
 Powell’s granddaughter Jorja, 7, sat on a wooden block nearby with her father. “I think it’s really cool,” the girl said. Her nickname when she was younger, she said, was “Panda” — because she is half-white and half-Asian, she joked. 
 
 Suddenly at 5:33, someone said, “I think it’s coming.” 
 
 A silence fell over the crowd. “Come on, sweet mama,” Powell said. “Come on, baby.” 
 
 At 5:35, the first glimpse of the baby came on the screen. People burst into applause and shouted, “Yes! Yes! Oh, my God!” 
 
 Jorja jumped up: “She had a baby!” 
 
 Mei Xiang, who went into labor about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, has already delivered two surviving cubs since 2005 — Tai Shan on July 9, 2005, and Bao Bao on Aug. 23, 2013. 
 
 She gave birth to a stillborn cub about 26 hours after Bao Bao. And on Sept. 16, 2012, she gave birth to a cub with liver abnormalities, and it died six days later. 
 
 [From the archives: Panda cub dies after one week.] 
 
 Giant panda cubs, like many newborns at the zoo, are extremely fragile. Six other giant panda cubs have died at the zoo dating to the 1980s. 
 
 The birth came three years after zoo officials were prepared to request replacements for Mei Xiang and the zoo’s male giant panda, Tian Tian, because of their poor reproductive record. In 2011, the pair had gone five years without producing a cub. 
 
 The first new cub was the second in two years. 
 
 [From the archives: Five minutes of terror, then joy over birth of panda cub ] 
 
 At a news conference after the first birth Saturday, zoo officials cautioned that Mei Xiang and her cub would need to be monitored very closely. The mother and her offspring were to be watched on the panda cam around the clock, with staffers on hand at all hours to respond, said the zoo’s director, Dennis Kelly. That was how the second birth was spotted. 
 
 “We’re very cautious,” Kelly said. “In 2012, we lost a cub after six days. This is still a very fragile time for this cub.” 
 
 Don Neiffer, the zoo’s chief veterinarian, appeared in his navy scrubs and described the walk-up to the birth. Mei Xiang was behaving very lethargically, and Neiffer on Wednesday had spotted on an ultrasound scan what he said was a developing fetus inside the panda. 
 
 In the last couple of days, Mei Xiang began licking her chest and abdomen in apparent preparation for the birth. After her water broke, “she was bearing down a bit,” he said, before the cub arrived noisily into the world. 
 
 Speaking of the first cub, Neiffer said no decision had been made on when zoo staffers will examine the cub for paternity, gender and general health, Neiffer said. Naming will come later. 
 
 “There’s a lot of very important bonding going on right now,” he said. “We don’t want to disturb that.” 
 
 [Related: Zoo officials spot a fetus] 
 
 The giant panda had been artificially inseminated twice on April 26 and 27 with semen collected from Tian Tian and from a male giant panda at a research center in Wolong, China. 
 
 In 2011, the zoo reached a new lease agreement with China that extended the stay of the two giant pandas for five years. All cubs born in the zoo must be returned to China four years after birth. The new agreement expires Dec. 6, 2015. 
 
 The zoo’s first pandas, Ling-Ling, a female, and Hsing-Hsing, a male, arrived in 1972, one of the fruits of President Richard M. Nixon’s peacemaking visit to China. 
 
 The two have since died. They produced several cubs, but none lived more than a few days. 

 In this photo provided by the Smithsonian's National Zoo, one of the giant panda cubs is examined by veterinarians after being born at Smithsonian's National Zoo on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, in Washington. The National Zoo in Washington says its adult female panda has had twins. 
 
 The National Zoo's giant panda, Mei Xiang, gave birth to twins Saturday, almost two years to the day after giving birth to her daughter, Bao Bao. 
 
 Mei Xiang was seen picking up and licking her first cub at 5:35 p.m. Saturday, live on the zoo's panda cams. The cub could be heard squealing just after the birth, which zoo officials called a good sign. 
 
 The second cub was born just after 10 p.m. As is the zoo's practice, one of the two cubs was retreived from Mei Xiang's enclosure and placed in an incubator. That cub appears to be in good health, according to a post on the zoo's Facebook page. 
 
 Zoo veterinarians had not yet retrieved the other cub from Mei Xiang's enclosure late Saturday night. They will closely monitor both mom and that baby on the panda cams, waiting until they can retrieve the cub without distressing mom or cub. 
 
 Best Look Yet At New Panda Cub 
 
 News4's Darcy Spencer has new video from the Panda Cam of the first of two brand new cubs who arrived Saturday at the National Zoo. (Published Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015) 
 
 The time after the birth is critical for bonding, but this is "still a very fragile time" for the cubs, said National Zoo Director Dennis Kelly. 
 
 In 2012, a female cub died a week after her birth. "We are very excited but we are very cautious," Kelly said at a press conference after the first birth. 
 
 There's a protocol for twin panda births, which happen about 50 percent of the time in the difficult and often-disappointing world of giant panda procreation. The Zoo's panda team will swap the cubs into the enclosure, allowing one to feed and bond with Mei Xiang while the other is bottle-fed and cared for in an incubator, the Zoo said. 
 
 The births came quickly on Saturday. Earlier that day, the Zoo's panda team said in a Facebook post that Mei is "restless, having contractions, body licking, and remains in her den." The team said those behaviors are consistent with an imminent birth. 
 
 Two Tiny Pandas Born at National Zoo 
 
 Around 4:40 p.m., the zoo said the panda team confirmed that Mei Xiang's water broke. 
 
 Zoo personnel monitored Mei through their panda cams, which were overloaded from time to time due to the popularity of the pandas. 
 
 Mei was inseminated April 26 and 27 with frozen sperm from Hui Hui, a panda living in China, and with sperm from the zoo's male giant panda, Tian Tian, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute said. 
 
 Watch the Moment Giant Panda Gives Birth 
 
 Giant Panda Mei Xiang gives birth to new cub at the National Zoo! (Published Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015) 
 
 On Aug. 10, Mei's hormone levels were on the rise as she began to show typical signs of pregnancy or pseudopregnancy, including spending more time in her den, sleeping more, body licking and cradling objects. 
 
 On Tuesday, the National Zoo closed its giant panda exhibit as Mei entered her final final phase of her pregnancy due to her sensitivity to noise. Wednesday, Zoo vets detected her fetus on an ultrasound -- the first time they had ever seen a fetus on ultrasound, since Mei Xiang usually doesn't cooperate with scans. 
 
 At the time, zookeepers thought they might have spotted a second fetus, but they couldn't be sure, they said at the afternoon press conference. 
 
 This is the first time the National Zoo has had newborns and an older cub -- in this case, 2-year-old Bao Bao -- at the same time. 
 
 Top 10 Bao Bao Moments 
 
 Mei Xiang has previously given birth to four cubs, two of whom survived: male Tai Shan, who was born at the zoo in 2005 and now lives in China, and female Bao Bao, who still lives at the National Zoo. In addition to the female cub that died in 2012, another female cub, Bao Bao's twin, was stillborn. 
 
 Tian Tian fathered all four cubs. It's not yet known which of the two possible fathers sired these cubs. 
 
 Following Chinese tradition that celebrates 100 days of life, panda cubs are named 100 days after their birth. 

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– Great news out of the National Zoo in Washington this afternoon: The giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth at 5:34pm, the zoo announced via tweet. No word yet on the gender. The Washington Post notes that Mei Xiang has given birth to four other cubs since 2005, two of whom died. But a zoo spokesperson says the cub's loud vocalizations were a "great sign for good health." Prior to today, Mei Xiang's most recent successful birth was that of Bao Bao in 2013. Assuming all is well, this would be the first time the zoo would have two cubs at the same time, notes NBC Washington. Yes, there's a panda cam, but heavy volume today will make getting in tricky. Read about the insanely tricky process of breeding pandas here.