Double happiness for Berlin as resident panda gives birth to twins
- Germany welcomes first panda cubs born in the country
- Zoo reports mother and babies doing well and in good health
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Berlin zoo is celebrating the safe arrival of panda twins, in the first time that the rare animals have been born in Germany.
Resident panda Meng Meng delivered her first cub on Saturday evening, with the second baby arriving about an hour later.
The zoo posted a video on Twitter of the new mother guiding one of her pink babies to feed, with the announcement: “Meng Meng became a mom – twice! We are so happy, we are speechless.”
The cubs weighed in at 136 and 186 grams but their genders had not been determined, the zoo said.
“Meng Meng and her two cubs coped well with the birth and are all in good health,” zoo director Andreas Knieriem said.
At birth, the pink cubs, with their fine white down and disproportionately long tails, bear little resemblance to the adult black and white bears.
The births are particularly rare as it is notoriously hard to breed pandas.
Meng Meng and male panda Jiao Qing are on loan from China and arrived in Berlin in June 2017 to great fanfare.
Famed for its “panda diplomacy”, China has sent its national treasure to only about a dozen countries as a symbol of close relations.
The zoo pays US$15 million for a 15-year contract to host them, with most of the money going toward a conservation and breeding research programme in China.
While the cubs are born in Berlin, they remain Chinese and must be returned to China within four years after they have been weaned.
China has previously given three pandas to Germany but the last one, 34-year-old Bao Bao, died in Berlin in 2012, having become the oldest male panda in the world.
About 1,864 pandas remain in the wild in China, up from around 1,000 in the late 1970s, according to the environmental group WWF.
Just over 400 pandas live in zoos around the world, in conservation projects set up with Beijing.
