Panda cub set for public debut
Print Edition
The first Taiwan-born giant panda cub is healthy and set to make her public debut in January, a zoo official said yesterday after panda mania swept the island in recent months.
“Yuan Zai is growing up healthily and she is practising climbing,” the official said.
“We expect that she will be fit to be moved to an exhibition enclosure to be seen by the public in early January when she is around six months old.”
The cub was delivered on July 6 at the city zoo of Taipei following a series of artificial insemination sessions after her parents — Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan — failed to conceive naturally.
Zookeepers had to separate tiny Yuan Zai from her mother Yuan Yuan a few days after birth.
They raised her in an incubator with round-the-clock monitoring by the zoo staff after she was slightly injured while being reared.
The mother and daughter were reunited for the first time on August 13 — an encounter that saw the giant panda licking and cuddling her baby before they fell asleep together inside the cage. Footage was broadcast around the world and made waves on the Internet.
The cub, which weighed 180 grams at birth, weighs 9,908 grams after 141 days, the zoo said.
Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan were given to Taiwan by the Chinese mainland in December 2008 and have become huge attractions at Taipei Zoo.
Fewer than 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, mainly in the southwestern Sichuan Province, with a further 300 in captivity around the world.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
