Meng Meng, panda in residence at Berlin’s Zoo, has given birth to twin sons who are almost guaranteed to be stars of the show once they are ready to meet the public.
Zoo officials report that the mother apparently took to her cubs quickly. “She immediately laid the young animal gently on her stomach and began to warm him lovingly with her big paws, her warm breath and the soft fur of her cheeks,” the zoo says. As the picture shows, they hardly look like pandas; together they weigh less than a pound.
Like all zoo pandas around the world, Meng Meng and her mate Jiao Qing, are only on loan from reserves in China, and the two cubs are scheduled to leave Berlin for China once they are fully-grown at four years. The birth was a bit of a surprise for Berlin: the zoo only announced the pregnancy a week before.
