Friday, 16 July 2010

Giant panda holds newborn cub in mouth, cub lives

Ted Thornhill - 15th July, 2010

A giant panda caused pandemonium when she grabbed her pink and hairless baby in her mouth – but luckily she was just showing motherly love.

Mummy panda Zhuyun gave birth to the cub this year at a breeding centre in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, after mating with a male named Lingling.

The little fella weighs a very cute 159.5 grams and measures an adorable 14.8cm. Awwwww.

(Writer pauses for a moment and sighs at the sheer cuteness of it all).

Workers panicked for a few moments when he was grabbed by mother, but all was well.

The baby won’t be named for another 100 days, which is a tradition in China.

His birth makes Zhuyun’s family four-strong, as she also has a little girl, Minmin.

Zhuyun and Lingling are part of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.

Pandas are one of the world’s most endangered animals, with just 1,590 in the wild - mostly in the mountains of Sichuan - and 210 in captivity.

The Panda Research Center, founded in 1963, sits in a 200,000-hectare nature reserve and houses around 150 pandas. Most of them were moved to the Ya’an reserve when the centre was damaged by the huge earthquake of May 2008.

The centre is currently being rebuilt.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/835199-giant-panda-holds-newborn-cub-in-mouth-cub-lives

No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!