Joy and sadness at twin panda birth
Twin panda cubs were born in the Beauval zoo near Tours last night, but the birth was marred by tragedy when one panda cub died
The surviving cub has been named Mini Yuan Zi. He and his twin sibling were the first pandas ever to be born in France.
It was announced in July that the mother, Huan Huan, was pregnant, after being artificially inseminated from partner Yuan Zi.
She abandoned the first-born cub when the second came along. The cub was placed in an incubator but died shortly after.
Female pandas are only able to raise one cub at a time, and they choose to raise the cub most likely to survive.
The Beauval Zoo has house the couple since 2012, and they are on a 10-year loan from China.
Panda reproduction is a notoriously tricky business. Females are only fertile for around two days per year.
Panda diplomacy has been an important tool in Chinese foreign relations. The couple in the Beauval zoo are among the roughly fifty pandas living in captivity in 22 countries outside China.
There are around 1864 pandas still living in the wild according to the World Wildlife Fund. 1246 of those live in one of the 67 panda nature reserves in China.
As of 2015, 425 pandas are living in captivity, in breeding centres or zoos.
