Male panda superstar having the time of his life after performing a series of stunts in his enclosure as amazed spectators watch.
Smartphone footage recorded by a visitor depicted the fluffy bear, named Meng Lan, climbing on the top of a swinging bench in his enclosure in the Beijing Zoo, located in the city’s Xicheng District, in China, on 14th January.
He can then be seen walking on the horizontal bar of the swing while maintaining perfect balance, which left spectators at the zoo stunned.
The adorable video became a massive hit after it was shared on the Chinese microblogging website Weibo on 16th January.
It reached more than 190,000 views within a day after it was posted.
Meanwhile, social media users on both Weibo, and TikTok’s sister app for China, Douyin, could not refrain from sharing their thoughts in the comment section.
Douyin user ‘carrot’ said: “Can he go to the next Olympics?”
Then user ‘Long time no see, time is like a song’ commented: “Meng Lan is cute no matter what he does.”
And ‘Hee hee hee m’ added: “Cute and flexible little fat guy.”
Meng Lan who gained worldwide fame for his mischievous behaviour turned eight years old in July last year.
The giant panda made headlines in 2016, when it made an ‘uh-huh’ sound when a zookeeper nagged it for being too fat. It later refused to move forward in protest to the keeper.
Several years later in 2021, he once again hit the front pages when he broke out of his enclosure in front of visitors, by climbing up and poking his head over the wall of his habitat.
Giant pandas, a bear species endemic to China, are listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species.
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Story By: Georgina Jedikovska, Sub-Editor: Simona Kitanovska, Agency: Asia Wire Report
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