He sits in his favourite spot high up in the treetops and nibbles – still a little awkwardly – on the fresh green leaves. It’s taken a while, but he has finally had enough of mother’s milk and is now getting his sharp teeth stuck into a panda’s staple food. Both brothers will probably be fully weaned by one and a half years of age. Did you know that, unlike other bears, pandas don’t hibernate? This means they don’t need to put on an extra layer of fat for the winter. Their dense black-and-white fur protects them from the wind and cold even in the middle of winter.
Currently, the keepers are providing Berlin’s pandas with around 80 kg of fresh bamboo every day from the Panda Garden’s well-stocked cool store. This amount will probably increase in the near future in order to keep the two growing brothers well fed. Around 99 percent of an adult panda’s diet consists of bamboo. And they are also quite picky: the black-and white bears will only eat 24 of the more than 1,000 known bamboo varieties!
