Giant pandas Ping Ping and Fu Shuang made their public debut at Zoo Atlanta on Friday, ending a two-year absence of pandas from the city and opening a new $6 million habitat.
Giant pandas Ping Ping and Fu Shuang made their public debut at Zoo Atlanta on Friday, chewing bamboo and lounging in their new habitat as visitors got their first look at the pair. The debut opened the Arthur M. Blank Panda Grove, a habitat rebuilt at a cost of $6 million with a grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation.
Ping Ping, a male, and Fu Shuang, a female, are both six years old and were born at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China. They arrived in Atlanta on September 27 aboard a FedEx Boeing 777 nicknamed the Panda Express, and completed a mandatory quarantine before going on show. They are in Atlanta under a 10-year loan agreement between the zoo and the China Wildlife Conservation Association.
Atlanta previously hosted pandas on loan from China starting in 1999, and seven cubs were born at the zoo before the last pair and their offspring returned to China in October 2024. Zoo Atlanta is now one of only three American zoos housing giant pandas, alongside the San Diego Zoo and the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, and the only one in the Southeast. Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng attended the debut event.
The AFP account and the Xinhua report agree on the debut date, the pandas' names and ages, the September 27 arrival and the 10-year loan. The BBC account adds that the zoo opened its gates later than usual for the occasion, with a ceremony at 8 a.m. and general admission from around 10:30 a.m., and that opening weekend events run through November 8.
The return restores a conservation partnership that has run for more than two decades, including research that produced seven cubs in five litters. Caretakers hope the pair may eventually mate and contribute to the species' conservation, though any cubs born in Atlanta would belong to China, as do the two pandas themselves.