Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Panda runs survival school for cubs

21 year-old panda Yaya began giving her two sons survival training on Saturday at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, in Chengdu, the capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Born on August 24,1990, Yaya and her brother, Xiangxiang, have become the world's first artificially-bred twin pandas to survive.


YouTube link.

The first part of the training was foraging. Breeders put several apples, a favorite of Yaya and her cubs, in some bushes within the pandas' pen. After searching around the bush, only Yaya emerged with apples. When they approached their mother for food, Yaya refused give them the apples, forcing the cubs to fend for themselves. Finally, they found their own apples and happily enjoyed the meal.

The second skill Yaya taught her babies was scratching. While Yaya scratched one of the cubs, the other one would observe. The two babies learned the scratching technique quickly and immediately went to scratch each other.

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