Everland, the largest theme park and zoo in South Korea, located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on Friday released photos of 12-day-old panda twins born at the park.
In the released photo, the twin cubs have started to grow distinctive black markings, which typically begin showing 10 days after birth. Newborn pandas do not sport the signature black-and-white markings, and their eyes will open after six weeks, according to National Geographic.
Ai Bao and Le Bao, the panda parents who gave birth to the female cubs, have been on loan from China as a diplomatic gesture since 2016, and are due to stay here until 2031.
The couple also gave birth to Fu Bao, the first panda to be born naturally in Korea, in 2020. Fu Bao's third birthday was recently celebrated at the park, which reportedly will be its last birthday at Everland.
Fu Bao is expected to leave Korea before she turns 4, the average age a panda reaches sexual maturity, for reproduction in China.
China began sending pandas, which are native to some regions of China, as "diplomats" in the 1950s. Mingming and Lili were the first pandas loaned to Korea in 1994, to celebrate two years of diplomatic relations, but they were returned to China in 1997 due to a currency crisis.
Giant pandas were classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1990, and were downgraded to vulnerable in 2016, as decades of conservation efforts yielded results.
There are currently 1,864 pandas in the wild, as estimated by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Complicating the recovery of panda populations is the infrequency of their procreation.
Ai Bao and zookeepers are taking shifts taking care of the cubs, who are kept both in incubators and by the side of Ai Bao to keep them healthy, Everland reported. The cubs are receiving attentive care and are fed with both breastmilk and formula.
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