Edition: U.S. / Global

Hsing-Hsing the Panda Is Severely Ill

Published: June 3, 1999

He looked as cute as ever today, perched against the back wall of his feeding room at the National Zoo, munching on bamboo shoots.

But Hsing-Hsing, the surviving giant panda of two that China gave the United States in 1972, is suffering from kidney failure, and zoo officials said at a news conference this afternoon that they could not predict how much longer he would live.

''His condition is irreversible but stabilizable,'' said Dr. Lucy Spelman, a staff veterinarian at the zoo, who described Hsing-Hsing's weakened condition as inevitable, given his advanced age. Giant pandas in the wild live about 20 years, and Hsing-Hsing is 28.

''Ultimately it's a debilitating illness,'' she added. ''He'll get better, then he'll get worse. All we're doing is buying time. But we really don't know how long he might live. There are no models. He is the oldest panda being treated for this condition.''

Hsing-Hsing's female denmate, Ling-Ling, died of heart failure at the age of 23 in 1992. At the time, she was the oldest giant panda in captivity.

Zoo officials said Hsing-Hsing's death would leave 17 giant pandas outside China, just 5 of them in North America -- 2 in San Diego and 3 in Mexico City. Zoologists estimate that 1,000 giant pandas live in the wild in China, the only country where they exist outside captivity, and that 100 others are in Chinese zoos.

Because giant pandas are among the rarest of animals, replacing Hsing-Hsing (pronounced SHING-shing) would be hard under any circumstances. But National Zoo officials said the effort could be made more difficult by the especially prickly relations between China and the United States since NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and the finding of a Congressional committee that Beijing had for years made a concerted effort to steal American nuclear secrets.

Yu Shuning, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was ''very sad'' to hear of Hsing-Hsing's illness but was not aware that China had ''any plans for the time being'' of offering the United States another pair of pandas.

Zoo officials said they became aware of Hsing-Hsing's illness last month, when they noticed a distinct decrease in activity, a loss of appetite and a drop in weight from his usual 250 pounds or so. An examination on May 15 found that he had severe kidney dysfunction, which was treated with antibiotics.

Lisa Stevens, the zoo's mammal curator, said more aggressive treatments, including dialysis, which would have required daily anesthesia, were not considered prudent because of Hsing-Hsing's age. A transplant was ruled out because no giant-panda kidneys are available.

Although Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing delighted visitors to the zoo for decades, their lives there were not without troubles, some of which reflected the severe difficulty of mating pandas in captivity.

From 1983 to 1989, Ling-Ling bore five cubs, all of which died at birth or shortly thereafter. On six other occasions, she experienced hormonal changes that resembled those of pregnancy but produced no offspring.

In addition, Hsing-Hsing has suffered from medical problems over the years, including an eye infection in 1993 and testicular cancer four years later that was successfully treated with surgery. More recently, zoo officials said, he has developed arthritis, which is common for a mammal of his age.

Photo: Hsing-Hsing, watched yesterday by a young boy at the National Zoo, is suffering from kidney failure. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)