Giant panda habitat
The zoo announced the launching of its panda-cam this week and it allows you to see within the habitat their two giant panda cubs live, play and grow in. The panda-cam, seen on the zoo’s website, operates between 9 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. EST each day and during other hours you can watch live video of the pandas.
The baby giant pandas’ mother, Er Shun, gave birth to her adorable twin cubs, Jia Panpan, a boy, and Jia Yueyue, a girl, on October 13 of last year. Er Shun does not actually belong to the zoo but to a zoo in China and is currently on loan.
The birth of Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue marked the first time giant pandas, an endangered species, had been born in Canada.
Pandas and lions
On Monday through Friday the zoo’s giant panda behaviorist monitors mom and kids and operates the camera to follow them about and get the best shots. On the weekends the footage is less-detailed. Mostly the babies wrestle, play about, eat and pay attention to mom.
Sometimes, like the babies of others species, they just nap.
The birth of the panda cubs was doubly exciting for the Toronto Zoo as under three weeks before the zoo was the scene of another rare in-captivity birth. Their white lioness, Makali, gave birth to four male cubs, Gus, Hank, Oliver and Harrison.
