Panda Cub Makes Her Public Debut At Malaysia’s National Zoo

Recently a panda cub that was born five months ago at a Malaysian zoo was introduced to the public. So far, the female panda has yet to be given a name and is the second cub to be born to parents Liang Liang and Xing Xing both of whom have been loaned to the zoo for ten years. The first female cub was named Nuan Nuan and was born in 2015. She spent two years with her parents at the zoo before being sent back to China as part of the agreement between the two countries.

World record

The media watched developments closely and captured images of the cub chilling out in her air-conditioned enclosure at the National Zoo. Experts say the cub is very healthy, weighing in at 9 kilograms already. They add it is a world record for natural reproduction of pandas with the parents conceiving and then delivering a second cub within a period of just four years. The National Zoo in Malaysia has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a panda complex which included bamboo trees after China loaned out the cub’s parents as a goodwill gesture marking 40 years of diplomatic relations with Malaysia.

Bit of controversy

WWF estimates that there are about 1,864 giant pandas left in the wild living primarily high up in the Western Chinese mountains amongst the bamboo forests which makes up the vast majority of their diets. The adult pair arrived in Malaysia just a few weeks after the Malaysian Airlines plane with 239 passengers most of whom were Chinese nationals vanished in March 2014 on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. At the time media in China were heavily critical of the Malaysian government’s handling of the tragedy. So far, no trace of the missing passenger jet has been found.