The young giant panda Fan Xing, born in 2020 in Ouwehands Zoo, is not a boy but a girl. The animal park found out when the animal was examined because it will soon move to China. That’s what Ouwehands Zoo director Robin de Lange and keeper José Kok told Op1 on Thursday evening.
“It’s very hard to see,” said the caretaker. “And we were so convinced that it must be a man that it never occurred to us to doubt it.”
Pandas are sexually mature in their fourth year of life. Fan Xing was taken away from his mother in January. The park hoped that her mother Wu Wen would get pregnant again when her baby was away from her. Female pandas are fertile for only one to three days a year. Only at birth is it known whether the mating was successful.
Fan Xing will participate in a breeding program in China.
Father Xing Ya and mother Wu Wen arrived in the Netherlands in 2017 and will stay in Rhenen for 15 years. The young they get can stay in Rhenen Zoo for up to four years. Then they have to go back to the breeding center in China.
Giant pandas are found only in China in the wild. The breeding program is successful, as the species is no longer considered endangered, but is still vulnerable.
