Giant Panda Twins Born in South Korea

The panda population in South Korea just went up by two, as beloved mom Ai Bao gives birth to twin girls. Officials at the Everland theme park near Seoul said mother and babes are in good health.

Ai Bao and her mate, Le Bao, came to the park in 2016, on a 15-year lease program from China. In 2020, the couple generated their first offspring together, a girl named Fu Bao. Until the twins showed up last week, Ai Bao, Le Bao, and Fu Bao had been the only pandas in South Korea.

“This feels like a great opportunity to call for better protection and preservation of pandas, which have become a symbol for endangered species,” Donghee Chung, the head of the zoo, said.

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a “vulnerable” species, as designated by the IUCN. There are about 1,864 in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and a couple hundred in captivity (mostly in China). The South Korean population just went up by two.

South China Morning Post has the video. Welcome to Earth, kids.

Photo credit: Yonhap / Samsung C&T