PARIS – Chinese giant panda experts and French zookeepers are working to ensure a panda cub’s survival after its twin died during the first-ever birth of the rare animal in France.
Images released Saturday by the Beauval Zoo south of Paris show mother Huan Huan enveloping the cub and zoo handlers feeding it in an incubator with a small bottle.
Giant #panda Huan Huan in Beauval zoo gives birth to twin cubs, the first ever to be born in France, but one of them died shortly afterwards pic.twitter.com/yzRwkLsTwV
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) 5 de agosto de 2017
The pink, hairless male weighing 142 grams (five ounces) is tiny compared to its 86-kilogram (190-pound) mother. She bore twins Friday, but the firstborn was too weak to survive. Huan Huan and partner Yuan Zi are on a 10-year loan from China.
Panda births are closely watched because they remain rare — there are only about 1,800 pandas in the wild in China and about 400 in captivity worldwide.