Calay News
A giant panda in South Korea recently gave birth to twin girls, marking a historic moment for the East Asian country, officials said. The tiny, pink cubs were born on July 7 at the Everland Resort theme park, located about 25 miles southeast of Seoul, as the park announced in a YouTube video celebrating their arrival. The video shows Aibao, the mother, giving birth to the first cub, whose entrance into the world was accompanied by high-pitched squeals. Upon birth, Aibao immediately scooped the newborn into her mouth and licked it. Minutes later, the second cub was born without complications, park officials said in the video.
The cubs, both female, are the first giant panda twins born in South Korea, officials said, according to the Associated Press. According to Reuters, about half or less of pregnant pandas give birth to twins. “This feels like a great opportunity to call for better protection and preservation of pandas, which have become a symbol of endangered species,” Donghee Chung, a park official, told the news agency.
Originally from the forests of China, giant pandas are solitary animals that feed almost exclusively on bamboo, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of wildlife. Currently, there are fewer than 2,000 giant pandas living in the wild worldwide, according to the WWF, although their population is starting to rise after years of decline. According to the organization, one of the main threats to their continued existence is habitat loss caused by infrastructure development. Captive pandas like Aibao can also be extremely difficult to reproduce, making births, especially twins, a highly anticipated event.
