Tuan Tuan (團團), an 18-year-old male panda at Taipei Zoo, has been moved into palliative care after his health further deteriorated following months of medical issues, zoo management said in a news release yesterday.
Tuan Tuan had three seizures in late August, and had since appeared increasingly lethargic and unsteady while moving around the panda enclosure.
After undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan on Sept. 18, Tuan Tuan was diagnosed with a brain lesion and has since regularly received medication to prevent seizures.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo via CNA
The zoo said a new MRI scan showed that the lesion had grown and might be exerting pressure on other parts of Tuan Tuan’s brain.
Tuan Tuan’s vets said the new scans indicate a greater likelihood that the seizures were caused by a malignant brain tumor, but, because they are unable to perform a biopsy, they cannot be certain.
Based on Tuan Tuan’s recent health problems and his response to anesthesia, his vets have decided to halt any further invasive exams and move him into palliative care, the statement said.
Under the new care protocols, Tuan Tuan would receive daily medications to ease his symptoms, as well as intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration and a vitamin-rich diet to help him maintain his strength, the zoo said.
Tuan Tuan has reached a panda’s average lifespan of 15 to 20 years in the wild, although the animals frequently live up to 30 years in captivity.
Tuan Tuan is one of two giant pandas that were gifted by China in 2008 to mark increasingly close relations with Taiwan at the time. The pandas were four years old when they arrived in Taipei.
Then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) offered Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan (圓圓) to Taiwan as a gift in May 2005 when then-opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) visited Beijing for talks with Chinese Communist Party officials.
However, the gift was blocked by the then-Democratic Progressive Party-led government, which objected to China’s treatment of the gift as a “domestic transfer” between zoos because it implied that Taiwan is part of China.
The pandas were gifted to Taiwan after former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office, heading an administration that favored closer ties with China.
Taipei and Beijing sidestepped the issue of the recipient country’s name by listing the importer as “Taipei, Taiwan” and the origin of the pandas as “Chengdu, Sichuan.”
Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan — whose names together mean “reunion” in Chinese — have two cubs, Yuan Zai (圓仔) and Yuan Bao (圓寶), born in 2013 and 2020 respectively.
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