FRANCE: Christmas came early for the animals at France's Beauval Zoo, as pandas and orangutans opened boxes of presents containing treats on Friday (Dec 22).
The zoo's famous pandas received their favourite bamboo stalks, while the orangutans got lettuce and other treats for the occasion.
Zookeepers also built a snowman made of ice with a carrot for a nose, to the delight of the red pandas.
The treats are part of the zoo's enrichment program, designed to stimulate captive animals' cognitive abilities by sparking curiosity and creating variability in their daily routines.
China has been sending pandas abroad in gestures of goodwill since the 1950s in what has come to be known as "panda diplomacy".
Pandas are notoriously difficult to breed because females ovulate only once a year and can only become pregnant during a two- or three-day period. — Reuters