Washington ? Mei Xiang looked surprised, perhaps a bit put off by the shrill cries from the first giant panda cub born at the National Zoo in 16 years.

In this handout photo provided by the Smithsonian's National Zoo, veterinarians at the zoo monitors the zoo's newest addition, a giant panda cub born Saturday in Washington.

Within a few minutes, however, the first-time mother was licking and caring for her cub, so fragile that zoo officials had yet to determine its gender or inspect it.

“Mei Xiang is the poster child for a wonderful mom,” Dr. Suzan Murray, the zoo’s chief veterinarian, said Saturday at a news conference hours after the overnight birth of the cub conceived through artificial insemination.

Zoo officials hope that the cub will fare better than the five previous ones born at the zoo since 1983. All died within days.

Their parents – the now-deceased Hsing-Hsing and his female partner, Ling-Ling – were gifts from the Chinese government in 1972 and the original source of the capital’s panda fever.

Cubs typically weigh only 3 ounces to 5 ounces and are about the size of a stick of butter.

The public will have to wait at least three months to see mother and cub, who will remain indoors at the panda exhibit area.

Until then the zoo’s Web cam – expected to be accessible online at http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas beginning this morning – will provide the only public view of the two.