Come here and let's have a cuddle! Atlanta Zoo's favorite resident Lun Lun panders to her cub's every need by hugging him as she licks him clean
- Mother Lun Lun, 15, has been given both twins to look after
- One has been looked after in nursery as instinct is to abandon him
- Twin boys named after 100 days in keeping with tradition
- Mei Lun and Mei Huan mean 'indescribably beautiful' and 'magnificent'
- Born in July and are first twin pandas born in US since 1987
- Family are getting ready to welcome visitors at zoo
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For zookeepers, handing babies over to their mother can be stressful, especially when they are as important as two giant Pandas.
But Lun Lun, Zoo Atlanta's most famous resident, shows her parenting experience in these photos as she cuddles and cleans her baby boy Mei Lun - which means 'indescribably beautiful' in Chinese.
Meanwhile her other twin cub, Mei Huan - which means 'magnificent' - sleep peacefully at her feet as the family prepares to go on display for the first time.
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Giant Panda Lun Lun gave birth to twin boys Mei Lun (being cuddled) and Mei Huan (at her feet) in July, marking the first panda twins to be born in the US since 1987
The cubs are her fourth and fifth children and in these pictures she shows her parenting experience
Mei Lun and Mei Huan were named after a Chinese phrase which means 'something indescribably beautiful and magnificent. More than 51,000 people voted for the names on Good Morning America
Until now one of the twins has been looked after in a nursery as a panda's instinct is to abandon one of them
The two cubs, which were born in July, were the first panda cubs to be born in America in 2013 and are Lun Lun's fourth and fifth children.
The delivery of twins surprised zookeepers who were only expecting one to be born, and they are the first panda twins in the US since 1987.
These pictures mark the first time that Lun Lun has been allowed to care for both babies, as pandas' will naturally ignore one twin in the wild.
The twin birth surprised zookeepers as ultrasound scans had shown only one baby, but two were born
The two cubs were named at 100 days old, in keeping with Chinese tradition which recognises that a large number of panda cubs die when they are very young
Giant Pandas are notoriously difficult to breed as they have naturally low sex drives and can accidentally crush their young shortly after birth because the cubs are so small
The 15-year-old female panda was artificially inseminated using sperm from her partner, Yang Yang, who was born with her at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
The pair are on loan to Zoo Atlanta, in Georgia, along with three others, The attraction pays yearly rent to China to keep them there and has alos donated $10million to panda conservation.
There are thought to be jut 1,600 wild panda left, living on hilly mountain ranges in central China.
The animals are notoriously difficult to breed, often lacking a sex drive, and sometimes accidentally crushing small cubs shortly after birth, leading to falling numbers in the wild.
The 15-year-old Lun Lun was artificially inseminated using sperm from her partner Yang Yang who was born at the same centre as her in China
Lun Lun and Yang Yang are two of the five pandas at Zoo Atlanta which they rent from China for an annual fee
The pandas are endangered due to low breeding rate, and deforestation of bamboo forests which is all they eat
They also depend on bamboo forests for their sole food source, which have been decimated by human deforestation.
A quirk of evolution means that the natural meat-eater has come to feed solely on plants, and its digestive system extracts precious little energy from the stalks it eats.
As a result pandas must eat 23 to 36lb (12 to 15 kg) of bamboo each day which takes them an astonishing 12 hours, meaning they are particularly vulnerable if food starts to disappear.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2507787/Atlanta-Zoos-panda-Lun-Lun-shows-parenting-skills-cute-new-photos.html#ixzz2kqO3s1LO
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