Now that we\u2019re past breeding season, Qing Bao will experience a phenomenon called a pseudopregnancy. Even though she did not breed, she will go through the same hormonal and behavioral changes that she would experience if she were pregnant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To monitor Qing Bao\u2019s hormones, we regularly collect samples of her urine and send them to the Zoo\u2019s endocrinologists. They analyze the samples and look for changes in her estrogen and progesterone levels, which rise and fall just as they would during a real pregnancy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Aug. 13, our scientists confirmed Qing Bao\u2019s hormones are elevated, indicating the start of a\u00a0 pseudopregnancy.\u202fJust like with a true pregnancy, we expect to see her activity level change over the next four-to-six weeks. Qing Bao may become restless at first, then show less interest in food, become more sensitive to noises in her environment, nest-build, cradle objects and sleep more.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that we\u2019re past breeding season, Qing Bao will experience a phenomenon called a pseudopregnancy. Even though she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-88612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}