A mother panda has given birth to twin cubs after having two marathon mating sessions in the wild.
Cao Cao, a 16-year-old female panda, mated with wild male pandas on two occasions after being released from captivity by her keepers in February.
The two sessions lasted 16 minutes and 18 seconds in total, according to China Conservation and Research Center For The Giant Panda.
This means on average, Cao Cao’s mating session lasted longer than an average American man in bed.
A picture released by China Conservation and Research Center For The Giant Panda shows Cao Cao giving birth to one of the cubs on July 25 at the Hetaoping Panda Base in Wolong
According to figures released by The Daily Dot, an American man’s love-making session lasts from one minute 21 seconds to seven minutes one second depending on the state.
The current record of the longest panda mating session is 18 minutes and three seconds and was set in 2015 by male panda Lu Lu, which has been dubbed ‘the enduring brother’.
Cao Cao’s cubs are also the world’s first set of twins that with one captive parent and one wild parent.
The siblings, one male and one female, were born to 16-year-old panda mother Cao Cao last Wednesday at the Hetaoping Panda Base in Wolong, south-west China’s Sichuan Province.
Cao Cao’s first cub is male (pictured) and weighed 215 grams at the time of the birth
The younger sister is much smaller, weighing just 84 grams, and is being nursed by keepers
Female pandas are only in heat for up to 48 hours a year, making their pregnancy particularly difficult and rare. But Cao Cao has managed to conceive without human intervention two years in a row.
Last year, she gave birth to a male cub after spending the mating season in the forest. The cub was the world’s first baby panda to be born to both captive and wild parents.
Having been rescued from the wild as a cub in 2003, Cao Cao grew up in captivity.
An experienced mother, she had given birth five times to seven cubs before conceiving this pair of twins.
She was released from captivity on February 12 this year – ahead of panda’s mating season in spring. She was given a GPS in her collar to help keep a record of her activities.
Cao Cao (pictured in the nature) mated twice with wild pandas in the spring this year
The 16-year-old mother panda (pictured while pregnant) gave birth to the twins on July 25
Keepers discovered Cao Cao had got pregnant on July 25 when her appetite decreased.
The mother panda went into labour on the morning of July 25 and delivered the cubs in the early afternoon.
At the time of the birth, the elder male cub weighed 215 grams (7.6 ounces) while the younger female cub weighed 84 grams (3 ounces).
The elder brother is being nursed by Cao Cao while the younger sister is being looked after by keepers at the Hetaoping Panda Base, said Wu Daifu, the director of the base.
Both cubs are healthy.
Last year, she mated with a wild male panda on March 23 and gave birth to a male cub on July 31.
The cub was the world’s first ever panda to have both wild and captive parents.
The births of Cao Cao’s three youngest cubs mark the success of China’s back-to-wild panda breeding programme, which aims to increase the genetic diversity of its captive bear population.
Cao Cao’s cubs are also considered a breakthrough in the breeding and protection of the popular animal.
Zhang Hemin, director of China Conservation and Research Center For The Giant Panda, commented on the birth of Cao Cao’s cub last year: ‘We hope this will kick-start more efforts of releasing more pandas into the wild in the future.’
How does China introduce giant pandas back to nature?
The back-to-nature training was started by the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in 2005.
The Wolong centre is a co-founder of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.
The programme was designed to introduce artificially bred giant pandas to the wild after two-years of training and preparation.
China aims to re-introduce the pandas to nature after giving them training (file photo)
The first fully trained panda, Xiang Xiang, was sent back to the forest in 2006. However, the five-year-old bear was found dead in the forest in 2007. Expert said it had likely died from fighting with wild pandas over food and territory.
Since then, the centre has carried on training and releasing giant pandas to nature under the programme.
The Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre was established in 1980.
Located in the mountainous south-west China, it is currently the world’s largest panda protection and artificial breeding institution.
The giant panda, a symbol of China, was shifted off the endangered species list last September after years of intensive conservation efforts.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a report that the animal was classified as a ‘vulnerable’ instead of ‘endangered’ species, reflecting its growing numbers in the wild in southern China.
There are currently 471 captive pandas in China and most of them were bred using artificial insemination, according to China Daily.
While the population of captive pandas increased quickly, Chinese experts also worried that the genetic diversity of the bears was decreasing.
Cao Cao, a 16-year-old female panda that grew up in captivity, has successfully conceived in two consecutive years after mating with mild pandas while living in nature.
In 2017, Cao Cao gave birth to the world’s first panda cub that has both wild and captive parents.