A rare giant panda cub is the centre of attention at a Tokyo zoo, and hundreds of thousands of fans are scrambling to name it.
This adorable video shows the cub, who turned three months on Tuesday, showing off her new teeth.
The cub will officially be named later this month, and her carers have their work cut out for them with 320,000 name suggestions submitted by members of the public to chose from.
Big gal: Some 320,000 suggestions of names for the three-month-old baby panda have been sent in to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo so far
The unnamed little panda, born at Ueno Zoo in June, is learning to walk on all fours and growing at a healthy rate, zoo officials said this week.
She is first cub to be born at Ueno Zoo for five years, and now weighs 12lbs and is 24.6 inches from nose to tail.
‘(The baby panda) is beginning to use its hind legs to crawl or change directions, but it’s still unable to walk on all fours,’ Mikako Kaneko, who is in charge of panda care at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo, told reporters last month.
The panda’s mother, Shin Shin, who mated with male Ri Ri in February, had given birth to another cub in 2012.
You and me: The 90-day-old female baby giant panda and her mother Shin Shin play in one of their pens at Ueno Zoo
Show me your teeth: The panda cub has now developed both canine and molars
Measurements: The panda now weighs 12lbs and is 24.6 inches from nose to tail
It was the first panda birth at the zoo in 24 years – but the baby died from pneumonia just six days later.
Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key contributor – along with habitat loss – to their status as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.
About 420 giant pandas live in captivity, mostly in their native China, with about 1,860 in the wild.
Centre of attention: The baby panda, born in Tokyo in June, will be named later this month
Earlier this month there was disappointment for panda fans across Britain as it was revealed that Tian Tian, Edinburgh Zoo’s female, is not pregnant.
In August, the Scottish zoo had said it believed Tian Tian, which translates to Sweetie in Chinese, was expecting, but warned panda breeding was a complicated process.
‘It is with sadness that we can confirm Tian Tian, Edinburgh Zoo’s resident female giant panda, will not give birth to cubs this year,’ said Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said on Monday.