For the 1st time ever, a panda has delivered cubs in Germany
Meng Meng made history on Saturday, as she became the first panda to give birth in Germany.
Meng Meng lives at the Berlin Zoo, and welcomed two cubs on Saturday night — one weighed in at nearly five ounces, and the other at a little over six-and-a-half ounces. Andreas Knieriam, director of the Berlin Zoo, announced on Monday that Meng Meng and her cubs are all in good health. The zoo does not yet know the sexes of the cubs.
There are about 1,864 pandas in the wild, and roughly 400 in zoos, and since the endangered animal is so hard to breed, the birth of twins is celebrated. Meng Meng and a male panda, Jiao Qing, are on loan from China for 15 years, and have lived at the Berlin Zoo since June 2017. The cubs will stay in Berlin for the next four years or so, before being returned to China.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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