A giant panda named Hao Hao gave birth at a wildlife park outside of Brussels this week, making it only the sixth panda birth in Europe in the last 20 years.
The new addition to the panda population weighed in at six ounces, born to 6-year-old Hao Hao and her companion Xing Hui, who are both at the park on
loan from China, BBC News reported.
"It's a boy," Eric Domb, the director of the Pairi Daiza wildlife park, said in a news conference at the zoo in southern Belgium, the BBC noted. "Everything went exceptionally well."
Park zoological director Tim Bouts said that the cub, which looks like "a little pink sausage," gave a squeal as he was born. He added that the mother and newborn are fine, but the young panda is still in a high-risk period.
The mother carried the tiny baby around in her mouth as he wiggled about, according to a Sky News video of the two together.
"The giant panda is on the (International Union for Conservation of Nature's) red list of animals at a
high risk of extinction," said a Pairi Daiza statement. "Less than 2,000 pandas can be found in the wild, making every birth a true miracle."
"Over the past 20 years, only two European countries (Austria and Spain) were able, with China's help, to successfully reproduce panda's. Belgium will thus be the third European country to have ever had the pleasure of welcoming a panda cub," the statement continued.
China's People's Daily tweeted that the new birth was the first outside of its country this year.
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