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Twins with mother: weaning overnight first - this is particularly difficult for many human children
Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
The pandatrio in the Berlin zoo is a crowd puller, soon visitors could only meet a duo: the Berlin panda twins Pit and Paule are weaned from their mother.
The background is that the two of them still drink breast milk regularly, as the Berlin Zoo announced.
Weaning is preferred a little.
"Pit hasn't put on too much weight lately and looked relatively sleepy, even for a panda," said the zoological director, Ragnar Kühne.
According to experts, a reaction to breast milk could be a possible cause of pits decreased appetite.
Their protein could have disrupted the little panda's gastrointestinal tract.
Separated first of the night
As a rule, panda mothers and their offspring go their separate ways after four years at the latest, but Pit and Paule are only a good two years old.
The twins were born on August 31, 2019 and are called Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan in Chinese.
According to the zoo, the offspring and mother Meng Meng initially only spent the nights separately for careful weaning, but now they no longer meet during the day either.
The new situation means "that Pit and Paule will go their own way in the medium term and will probably move to China in the coming year," says zoo director Andreas Knieriem.
A date has not yet been set, but the Berlin Zoo is already in talks with Chinese panda experts to prepare for the move.
Pit and Paule are the first panda offspring ever in Germany.
The mother Meng Meng and the father Jiao Qing came to Berlin from China in 2017 - as a 15-year loan for the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Federal Republic of Germany.
According to the zoo, there are still around 1860 adult giant pandas living in the wild around the world.
apr / AFP
