A four-month-old panda cub became a Malaysian zoo’s new star on Saturday after making her first public appearance, to the delight of visitors.
The fluffy baby panda, which has not yet been named, is the second offspring of Liang Liang and Xing Xing, both of which are on a 10-year loan to Malaysia since 2014.
The first cub, also a female called Nuan Nuan born in August 2015, was sent back to China in November last year as part of a deal with Beijing to return cubs born in captivity at age 2.
Members of the media watched and filmed the cub in an air-conditioned enclosure at the national zoo outside Kuala Lumpur through a glass shield. Zoologists said the healthy cub weighs 9 kilograms.
Zoo officials have said the giant panda pair broke the world record for a second baby in four years via natural reproduction. Malaysia's national zoo has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on a panda complex including bamboo trees mimicking their natural habitat, after China loaned the cub's parents to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations with Malaysia.
Mat Naim Ramli, director of the national zoo's panda center, attributed the success of having two baby pandas born in Malaysia to having a healthy pair that "are able to accept each other".
He said the only diet at the moment for the baby panda was its mother's milk.
"I love pandas. They are so adorable. I want to cuddle the baby because it is so fluffy," visitor Karene Lee, 25, a business consultant, told AFP.
Chinese ambassador Bai Tian said he was pleased to see the cub was "comfortable and happy".
There are 1,864 giant pandas in the wild, living mainly in bamboo forests high in the mountains of western China and subsisting almost entirely on bamboo.
