SAN DIEGO – It will still be months before the San Diego Zoo gets new pandas, the first such bears sent to the United States by China in decades.
For now, the only U.S. zoo left with any is in Atlanta. But globally there are many places to check out the cuddly black-and-white bundles of fur as they munch on bamboo, climb trees and lounge on their backs.
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The bear is native to China, where it is considered a national treasure.
Here are some of the places where pandas can be seen, including possibly in the wild in China.
ATLANTA
Zoo Atlanta has four pandas, including the first twins born in the United States in more than a quarter century. Giant pandas typically care for only one cub when twins are born in the wild, which usually leads to just one twin surviving.
Ya Lun and Xi Lun and their parents, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, could be heading back to China in late 2024 unless the loan agreement is extended.
MEXICO CITY
The only other place in the Americas where people can see pandas is in Mexico City at the Chapultepec Zoo.
Xin Xin is the last panda in Latin America and is not on loan from China. That's because she's the only remaining bear descended from the giant pandas China gifted to foreign countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The second-generation Mexican-born panda traces her lineage to Pe Pe and Ying Ying, who arrived at the zoo in 1975.
QATAR
One of the last countries that China sent pandas to was Qatar in 2022, ahead of the Middle Eastern country hosting the World Cup.
The pair reside in an indoor enclosure in the desert nation designed to duplicate conditions in the dense forests of China’s mountainous Sichuan province. Eight-hundred kilograms (nearly 1,800 pounds) of fresh bamboo is flown in each week to feed them.
Jing Jing, the male, was given the Arabic name Suhail. Si Hai, the female, was given the Arabic name Thuraya.
MOSCOW
In 2019, the Moscow zoo welcomed its first pair of pandas, a male named Ru Yi and a female named Ding Ding. Chinese President Xi Jinping leased the pandas during an official visit that was to show a “sign of respect and trust.”
BERLIN
The Berlin zoo is home to Jiao Qing and Meng Meng, who arrived in Berlin in 2017. They gave birth to twins, the first panda cubs born in Germany. Those cubs have since returned to China.
CHINA
Giant pandas are limited to six mountainous areas of southwestern China in the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shanxi. A total of 34 pandas were born last year at two bases in Sichuan, including at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, a popular tourist destination in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.
More than 1,800 are estimated to exist in the wild, where they are threatened chiefly by habitat loss. About 420 others live in captivity in zoos and reserves, the majority within China.