Pit and Paule: birthday party for pandas
Photo: HANNIBAL HANSCHKE / REUTERSThe Berlin panda twins Pit and Paule celebrated their first birthday with an ice cream cake. According to the zoo, they served an ice cream cake made from beetroot juice, apples, sweet potatoes and bamboo. In addition, there was a large portion of snow from the nearby penguin house. "Pit and Paule have grown very dear to our hearts over the past year," said zoo director Andreas Knieriem.
The two, called Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan in Chinese, have already weighed 28 kilograms. According to the zoo, they increased their birth weight by more than 150 times.
Pit and Paule playing
Photo: Britta Pedersen / dpaThe twins were born on August 31, 2019. You are the first panda offspring ever in Germany. Mother Meng Meng and father Jiao Qing came to Berlin from China in 2017 - as a 15-year loan on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Federal Republic.
Symbolic animals for environmental and species protection worldwide
According to the zoo, there are still around 1860 adult giant pandas living in the wild. The species, formerly also known as the bamboo bear, only occurs in a few protected areas in China. The herbivore with its distinctive black and white fur pattern is one of the symbolic animals for environmental and species protection worldwide. A large-scale rearing and breeding program is in progress.
Something unusual recently happened in South Korea: not far from the capital, Seoul, a panda cub was born after natural fertilization - it is the first panda baby to be conceived in this way.
Offspring is not a matter of course for panda bears. The females are only fertile for about three days a year, otherwise the animals avoid each other. Pandas in captivity are actually considered to be downright sex grouch - but the seven-year-old Ai Bao became pregnant in March after she had successfully mated with the two-year-old male panda Le Bao.
Icon: The mirrorbam / AFP
