A zookeeper’s pet cat adopts a red panda that was rejected by its mother.
Posted: July 12, 2008 2 a.m. EDT
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| A baby red panda was adopted by a domestic cat. |
A domestic cat adopted a baby red panda and is feeding it as if it were her own, according to a statement released by the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. The baby panda is one of two born on June 30, the AFP reports.
The mother panda, Gladys, initially seemed to accept her babies, but a day after the birth, zookeepers found the young pandas had been abandoned. “A cat belonging to one of the zookeepers had just given birth,” the zoo’s statement said. “So we decided to try to get it to suckle the pandas.”
One of the pandas did not survive, but the second has been accepted by the mother cat, which is suckling the female panda with her own litter of four kittens. “The young panda is doing well in the circumstances,” the statement said.
Endangered red pandas are found mostly in the Himalayan regions in China, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Burma. The small animals, only distantly related to giant pandas, are not much bigger than domestic cats when fully grown.