Eighteen panda cubs living in China's Wolong Nature Reserve have been named at a ceremony in Sichuan province. Names for the five to seven-month-old cubs were chosen from about 30,000 entries submitted by the public after an appeal for ideas. Tao Tao (playful in Mandarin) and Huan Huan (happiness) were amongst the most popular. The panda above was named Fu Wa after Beijing's Olympic mascot. Panda cubs play with their keepers at a breeding centre Workers at the nature reserve aided a record number of births last year in a mini baby panda boom. After the ceremony, the cubs left their mothers for the first time to stay in a panda "kindergarten". The move is to help the pandas adapt to the humidity and group living. They will be resident until they are a year old. The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered species and is native only to China. About 1,600 wild pandas live in nature reserves in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and 217 are kept in captivity. Back 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next



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