Prague Zoo: The red panda twins are already running outside
“The young thrive very well, they are sometimes still clumsy when moving in the branches, but day by day their motor skills can be done,” state head breeder Denisa Zběhlíková.
How the young stayed in the shed in September, where their mother went to breastfeed them, now they move independently on the outdoor paddock. There are visitors to the zoo can see them especially in the morning and around noon. According to the breeder, the young keep their young feeding, but the little pandas are already tasting bamboo and special granules for leaf-eating.
The parents of the panda twins are female Regica and male Pat. Which thirteen-year-old Pat is already an experienced father, for the two-year-old Regica, who has lived in Prague’s Troja since last year, they are the first descendants. In the wild, only females take care of their young. The reason is that red pandas live in their natural habitat mostly solitarily. The female also prepares a nest in the tree cavity for her offspring.
Endangered species
According to the zoo, red pandas are delicate beasts whose breeding is demanding. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it is an endangered species. The original home of pandas are mountain forests and bamboo thickets in China, India, Bhutan and Burma. The people there hunt them for meat and fur, which, for example, in Yunnan, China, symbolizes a happy marriage, which is why they sew caps for the newlyweds. These savings of about thirty centimeters and five kilos also threaten the loss of their natural environment.
The Prague Zoo has been breeding red pandas since 1955. Now visitors to the zoo can watch pandas in the enclosure at the main entrance. Originally, this enclosure, which was built in the zoo as the first, was intended for wolves. It was modified to its current form in 1993. However, the breeding of red pandas in Troy has not been successful for a long time. The first breeding in Prague was successful in 2012, when the female Maria and the male Pat were born a male Akim.
The Zoo in Prague’s Troja is one of the most visited places for tourists. However, due to the covidu-19 pandemic, there was a drop in visitors. Last year, 851,623 people visited the garden, almost 605,000 less than in 2019. The zoo was closed to the public for 114 days due to anti-epidemic measures, and operations were restricted for many other days of the year.
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Red panda cubs in the Prague Zoo.
Author: Oliver Le Que, Prague Zoo