Feature: Belgium's baby panda becomes star attraction in zoo

After a long wait of two months, the first panda ever born in Belgium finally made its maiden public appearance and instantly became the star attraction of Pairi Daiza zoo.

On Saturday, his mother Hao Hao decided to take her baby out of the nursery and "show him" to the public. Skittish at first, Hao Hao picked her baby up with her mouth several times, shying away from the crowd of visitors.

Weighing 3,120 g, the baby panda -- nicknamed Baby P -- now looks more like a real panda than a "pink sausage" that people described when he was first born.

Adorable as he is, Baby P is still an infant, unable to do more than sleep and drink milk.

That, however, did not stop a sea of visitors coming to see the adorable little creature. The queue outside the panda cave was hundreds of meters long, with people waiting at least an hour to get a glimpse of the sleeping Baby P.

Pairi Daiza staff told Xinhua that on Sunday, visitors had to wait three to four hours to see the panda cub.

"The baby panda is beautiful," said one little boy. Another girl Rebecca said that it was her fourth time seeing a panda, but the first time seeing a cub.

Although Baby P sleeps during much of the time, his mother doesn't leave his side. When the caregiver led Hao Hao out of the cave to feed her, she became very anxious, walking around the feeding cage and sometimes crawling on the wall fretfully.

"That shows Hao Hao is a good mother," Tanya, the caregiver, told Xinhua, "She does not want to leave her baby for one minute."

Compared to the loving mother, Xing Hui, the male panda, seems to have no idea that he has become a father. He lives in a separate cave and continues his idle life.

"It is the way pandas raise their young," said panda expert Wu Daifu, who takes care of the pandas in Pairi Daiza. "After mating, the job of raising the young is left to the mother. We have to keep the two adult pandas apart to prevent them from fighting."

Hao Hao and Xing Hui were sent to Belgium from China in 2014. They are the first giant pandas China has sent overseas for a lease term of 15 years instead of the usual 10.

The arrival of Hao Hao and Xing Hui made Belgium the 13th country and Pairi Daiza the 18th zoo in the world to house giant pandas, which are considered one of the world's most endangered species.

About 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of China's southwestern province of Sichuan, while over 300 live in captivity.

Source : XINHUA