Baby giant panda twins doing well after birth at Berlin Zoo

A pair of panda bear cubs are doing well after being born at the Berlin Zoo on Thursday afternoon, zookeepers said on Friday.

On Thursday morning, the zoo's 11-year-old pregnant female panda, Meng Meng, was already acting slightly restless and then her water broke around 10 am (08:00 GMT), zookeeper Ann-Katrin Hübner said on Friday as she recounted the birth.

"We were still talking and then you could actually hear the cub's cry and we realized that it was there," Hübner said.

The first cub arrived at 1:03 pm, with the second arriving at 2:09 pm. Meng Meng immediately took both of the cubs into her big arms, Hübner said.

According to the zoo, the gestation period was 149 days. Meng Meng and the cubs will spend the first period in the back of the panda stable.

It will be some time before visitors can see the animals. Berlin Zoo Director Andreas Knieriem said he hopes it will be sometime before Christmas.

He described himself as absolutely delighted about the birth.

"Mother Meng Meng shows us all what the word 'bear love' means - she takes great care of her offspring," he added.

Hübner described the small panda cubs as the size of "a small guinea pig with longer arms and legs, and as agile and slippery as a fish in the hand."

"They are almost naked. They only have a very light white coat. They are completely pink. There are no black spots yet," Hübner said. "They are quite strong and squirm in your hand, so you have to be very careful not to break anything."

The birth has caused a sensation as the Berlin Zoo, and is only the second time ever that two pandas have been born in Germany.

In 2019, Meng Meng gave birth to twins, Pit and Paule, who are now back in China.

Like their parents, the giant pandas also belong to the Chinese state, which only lends pandas to selected countries as part of a practice that's become known as panda diplomacy.

Biologist and panda curator Florian Sicks said the cubs weigh 169 grams and 136 grams, respectively, and are around 14 centimetres long, which Sicks said is quite normal for pandas.

The cubs are deaf, blind and completely helpless - they even need help from their mother to poop and urinate, Sicks explained.

After just 10 days they will have doubled their weight, and at two months they will be able to walk, he said. The milk of panda bears is extremely rich in energy, and they only begin to eat bamboo at six months.

After giving birth yesterday, Meng Meng was exhausted and did not eat anything, which Sicks said is also nothing unusual.

"Even in their natural habitat, giant pandas don't eat for the first 14 days because the cubs are so underdeveloped that they need round-the-clock care from their mother," he said.

As is usual in the wild, panda father Jiao Qing is not involved in the rearing of the cubs. He has been sitting in the zoo's giant panda enclosure as usual and eating bamboo.

According to the zoo, there are fewer than 2,000 adult giant pandas in their natural habitat. Every single cub is therefore an important contribution to the conservation of this endangered species, according to the zoo.