Twenty-three giant panda cubs made their public debut at a panda base in southwest China's Chengdu City on Thursday, offering the cutest scene one can imagine.
The baby pandas, aged one to four months, were all born at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding this year.
"I think this is just about the cutest thing in the entire world. I never imagine there will be so many baby pandas in one place," said a U.S. tourist named Aaron.
"I thought they were toys because they were lying there motionless. Then I realized they were cute baby pandas," said Zheng Shuo, a tourist from central China's Hunan Province.
This year, experts from the base also witnessed the birth of another four pandas overseas, raising the total number of base's newborn pandas to 27, a rare record since the establishment of the base.
The number of this year's newborn pandas at the base has almost doubled that last year. Experts attribute this to the improvement in breeding technology.
"We used to mate the pandas by observing their behaviors to decide the timing for mating. But now we combine behavior observation with endocrine analysis to get more accurate timing, thus ensuring a fairly high breeding rate," said Wu Kongju, animal management director at the base.
What's more, among the 27 newborn pandas there are 10 pairs of twins, accounting for 74 percent of the total.
Since its establishment nearly 30 years ago, the base has bred 176 giant pandas, the world's largest artificially-bred giant panda population.
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