SINGAPORE – Children skipped school and adults took leave from work on Monday to celebrate the “two-rrific” birthday of Le Le, Singapore’s first locally born giant panda.
The cub was born to mum Jia Jia and dad Kai Kai on Aug 14, 2021, after many attempts by his parents to conceive.
Fans sporting panda paraphernalia such as T-shirts, headbands and other accessories gathered on the walkway overlooking the panda exhibit at River Wonders.
They fawned over Le Le as the young panda enjoyed his spread of birthday treats, which included a bamboo cake, and a healthy mix of sugarcane, sweet potato, grapes and bamboo shoots.
The panda care team had put up decorations in the enclosure which he shares with his mother and planted gift boxes of hay for him to open. Kai Kai has a separate enclosure in the Giant Panda Forest.
As Le Le, accompanied by his mother, ate his way through his treats, there was a chorus of oohs and ahs.
“It’s so cute! How they eat, how they go around and play, everything,” said 11-year-old Sadaanandh Prem, who took a day off from school to see Le Le with his parents and younger sister.
His mother, Ms Shaline Prem, a 38-year-old home tutor, said Sadaanandh had told her that if he could, he would want to jump into the exhibit and play with the pandas.
As giant pandas are extremely solitary animals, cubs in the wild naturally separate from their mother when they are between 18 and 24 months old.
As Le Le has come of age, he is expected to grow more independent of Jia Jia in the coming months.
During this transition, interaction between mother and cub shifts, with the mother slowly rejecting her offspring and the cub beginning to eat, sleep and rest alone.
Noticing Le Le’s growing autonomy, the animal care team is helping him get used to his own private den.
Once the separation phase is complete, mother and son will split their time in the exhibit, with Le Le present from 10am to 2pm, and Jia Jia from 2pm to 6pm. Kai Kai is let out into his exhibit area throughout River Wonders’ opening time, from 10am to 7pm.
Visitors told The Straits Times that Le Le’s birth was one bright spark during the gloomy days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I think it brought a lot of brightness, a lot of hope, in the midst of Covid-19,” said civil servant Joanne Ng, 44, a regular visitor to the panda exhibit at River Wonders.
Mr Eric Teo, a 25-year-old student who attended Le Le’s first birthday party in 2022 and enjoys taking photos of the giant pandas, said: “Last year, because he was still a bit young, he was tumbling around. But this year, he seems to be more well adjusted.”
Tourists joined local enthusiasts to celebrate the little panda’s milestone. Ms Rei Taniguchi from Japan praised River Wonders’ open exhibition areas, as pandas in zoos that she has visited back home keep them enclosed.
With Jia Jia’s 15th birthday and Kai Kai’s 16th approaching in September, some fans already have plans to return to the zoo.
Mr Tei Boon Ping, 55, a director of operations for cyber security, has booked leave from work to attend both celebrations.
When asked why he takes so much interest in the giant pandas, he said: “Pandas have very cheerful faces that seem to encourage everyone, especially after a hard week of work.”
Jia Jia and Kai Kai have been on loan to Singapore from China since 2012. In 2022, Mandai Wildlife Group, which operates River Wonders, signed a deal with the Chinese authorities to extend the 10-year loan of the pandas for five more years, until 2027.
