BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s newest panda twins s flourish at Berlin Zoo. The cubs spent their first five days of life taking turns cuddling and drinking milk from their mother every hour.
Born Thursday from mother Mix Mix, 11, The zoo said Tuesday it was cautiously optimistic during this critical period: Deaths among panda cubs are highest in the first two weeks after birth and during the first month, when they do not yet have a functioning immune system.
Without human help, one of the cubs probably would not have survived, because giant pandas usually raise only one cub when they have twins. So the zoo has sprung into action with a team of experts from China’s Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, who are visiting Berlin.
When one of the twins is with its mother, the other stays in an incubator donated by a Berlin hospital.
“Without protective measures, the giant panda would probably already be extinct,” zoo director Andreas Knieriem said in Tuesday’s press release, adding that “every cub that grows up healthy counts.”
For decades, China gave its unofficial mascot to friendly countries as part of a policy of “panda diplomacy.” The country now loans pandas to zoos on commercial terms. There are about 1,800 pandas in the wild in China and a few hundred in captivity worldwide.
Currently deaf, blind and pink — their black-and-white panda markings will develop later — the firstborn twin now weighs 180 grams, while the second weighs about 145 grams (6.35 and 5.11 ounces). Both have regained their birth weight and gained more grams, which the zoo sees as a promising sign. The cubs’ sex has not yet been determined “with certainty.”
Mix Mix was artificially inseminated on March 26. Female pandas are fertile for only a few days each year. The twins’ father, 14-year-old Jiao Qing, is not involved in raising the cubs.
Meng Meng and Jiao Qing arrived in Berlin in 2017. In August 2019, Meng Meng gave birth to male twins Pit and Paulealso known by their Chinese names Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan, the first giant pandas born in Germany.
Those twins flew to China in December on a trip that was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but which had been contractually agreed upon from the start.
