Panda lady Lee Lee has become a mom. But what she doesn’t know is that she has twins. The zoo keepers are to blame for their ignorance, and with good reason.
In and of itself, it’s not uncommon for pandas to have more than one baby. However, multiple births pose a problem for the fluffy little bears: panda moms tend to only pay attention to one of their children. On the other hand, they ignore the rest of the offspring, which means that they starve to death.
However, panda mothers do not do this because they are being mean, but because they fear that they will not be able to support more than one baby. That’s exactly what an impressive video from “BBC Earth” explains.
Lee Lee’s zoo keepers are quite familiar with this behavior of new panda moms. They have therefore come up with a very special system so that twin mom Lee Lee takes care of her two babies. The employees simply let the youngsters rotate.
This means that while one baby is in the incubator, the other is with its mom. Lee Lee is then distracted with honey water. In the meantime, zoo keepers simply swap panda cubs.
In this way, Lee Lee gives her maternal care to both babies. The system is designed to guarantee a 100% chance of survival. This is still important, although thankfully pandas are no longer threatened with extinction.
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