Panda Hao Hao gave birth to a tiny cub in a Belgian zoo
Carefully holding the newborn baby in his mouth, panda Hao Hao seemed to easily get used to the role of mother. It is unlikely that she realizes how hard zoologists had to work to achieve this happy moment, and the threat to the life of her little son has not yet passed.
A new panda was born in a Belgian zoo on June 2. This is a very rare event, because now there are less than two thousand individuals left on Earth.
(14 photos in total)
On Thursday morning in the wildlife park "Paira Daiza" (Paira Daiza), a six-year-old panda Hao Hao had a healthy male baby. The pink, blind and bald bear cub weighed only 171 grams.
Hao Hao's "probable" pregnancy was announced only two weeks ago, but it was known that the fetus was very small.
The still unnamed cub was born as a "little pink sausage" and screamed loudly, after which Hao Hao took him in her mouth, zoo director Tim Boates said.
The mother and child are doing well now, but Boates warned that the risk to the baby's life is still present.
The zoo, in which, with the consent of the Chinese authorities, a pair of pandas has been living since 2014, collaborated with specialists from China, native to pandas, to carry out artificial insemination.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, 1,864 large pandas lived in the wild in 2014, twice as many as in the late 1970s and 17% more than a decade ago.
As part of efforts to preserve a biological species that has suffered greatly from human influence on the ecology of the highlands, where pandas survive by eating almost only bamboo, about 300 pandas now live in zoos, mainly in China.
It is known that pandas breed poorly in captivity, however, thanks to artificial insemination and knowledge about what pandas need for life, the number of small pandas has been growing recently.
Belgium has become the third country in Europe where a panda has successfully given birth in captivity. In addition to Belgium, pandas were born in zoos in Austria and Spain — three years ago, a cub was born in the Madrid Zoo.
Keywords: Belgium | Cub | Mimimi | Fertilization | Pandas | Childbirth