Twin pandas give birth to twin cubs
A pair of twin giant pandas each gave birth to twin cubs early this week, bringing the number of pandas born in captivity this year in China to six.
Qi Zhen and Qi Yuan delivered their babies on Sunday and yesterday at a giant panda research centre in Chengdu, the capital of south-west China’s Sichuan province, where they live, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
A 7oz panda cub was also born yesterday in another centre in Sichuan, and it became the heaviest cub in the history of China’s artificial breeding programme, the report said.
Its mother, Zhang Ka, was in labour for about 34 hours – also a record, it said.
Female pandas normally become sexually mature between four and five years old.
They can get pregnant once a year and usually give birth to one or two cubs at a time.
The panda is one of the world’s rarest mammals, with just 1,596 left in the wild, according to a 2002 government census.
