A 2-year-old red panda named Ruby died at the Santa Barbara Zoo this week, weeks after the deaths of her two newborn cubs.
Director of Animal Care Kristen Wieners said Ruby had shown signs of distress last weekend. She was brought to the zoo’s animal hospital and underwent extensive testing, but her condition declined rapidly. She died Wednesday morning.
“Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t pull her through that,” Wieners shared Thursday in a video message on Instagram.
The zoo believes that Ruby had Addison’s disease — an often undetected endocrine disorder that affects the body’s production of hormones like cortisol — and that the “physiological stress of pregnancy, birth, and lactation” sent her into crisis.
“Coming so soon after the loss of her newborn cubs, this is a devastating blow to our entire Zoo family,” the Facebook post read. “While pathology is underway to better understand her illness, veterinary teams do not believe her condition was connected to that earlier loss.”
Ruby’s two cubs were born on July 2and were the first red pandas born at the zoo in over 30 years. But the first weeks of a red panda’s life are fragile, with a mortality rate of roughly 40% for cubs under one year of age.
The first cub died at two weeks after it became lethargic, stopped nursing and was removed from Ruby’s care into a temperature-controlled incubator to receive intervention from veterinary teams.
The second cub died at three weeks after he was also removed from Ruby’s care for hand-raising “due to inadequate nursing by the cub,” the zoo said in a statement. Preliminary testing showed significant fluid around the cub’s heart and some congestion of the lungs.
“This is a heartbreaking loss for everyone—for those of us caring for Ruby and her cubs, for our entire Zoo team, for our community, and for the broader conservation efforts to protect these endangered red pandas,” Dr. Julie Barnes, Vice President of Animal Care & Health at the Santa Barbara Zoo, said in July following the loss of the first red panda.
Ruby had been at the zoo since May 2025 after she traveled from Seneca Park Zoo in New York. The cubs made her a mother for the first time, a hopeful sign for these endangered animals. It’s estimated that less than 10,000 exist in the wild.
Raj, Ruby’s 4-year-old partner and father to her cubs, is now the only red panda left at the Santa Barbara Zoo.
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