A delightful red panda has been born at Lisbon zoo. The zoo made the announcement this week, but the little creature is now six months old and ready to ‘meet the world’ (or at least visitors to the picturesque zoo that sits in the heart of the capital). The ‘miracle’ of this new arrival is that red panda reproduction is logistically very difficult. Females only come on heat once a year, and their period of fertility lasts between 12 to 36 hours. Red pandas are native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. They are on the IUCN Red List of endangered species with less than 10,000 mature individuals living in the wild. Their survival has been threatened by habitat loss and poaching, as well as by dint of their reproductive quirks.
