World's Oldest Male Panda Celebrates His Thirtieth Birthday

© AFP 2023Giant panda "Pan Pan" holds a mascot of the 16th Asian Games, at a zoo in Fuzhou, south China's Fujian province on November 12, 2010
Giant panda Pan Pan holds a mascot of the 16th Asian Games, at a zoo in Fuzhou, south China's Fujian province on November 12, 2010 - Sputnik International
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Pan Pan, who lives in China's Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre, celebrated his 30th birthday on Monday, the equivalent of 100 human years.

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The world's oldest male panda celebrated his 30th birthday on Monday, making him the equivalent of a human centenarian.

Pan Pan lives at China's Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Chengdu, and during his long life has fathered more than 130 offspring, making him father to one fourth of the world's pandas who have been bred in captivity. 

"Pan Pan is a heroic father in the panda world," said Wei Rongping, deputy of the center.

© AFP 2023 / STR Pan Pan pictured in September 2005 at the age of 25, at the panda sanctuary in Fuzhou, southeastern China's Fujian province, when he was selected as the official mascot for the 2010 Asian Games.
Pan Pan pictured in September 2005 at the age of 25, at the panda sanctuary in Fuzhou, southeastern China's Fujian province, when he was selected as the official mascot for the 2010 Asian Games. - Sputnik International
Pan Pan pictured in September 2005 at the age of 25, at the panda sanctuary in Fuzhou, southeastern China's Fujian province, when he was selected as the official mascot for the 2010 Asian Games.
According to staff at the Panda Protection Center, who threw him a birthday party to mark the occasion, Pan Pan was born in the wild in Baoxing county in Sichuan, south west China, in 1985. 

"We believe Pan Pan is the oldest male panda in the world," Wei told guests at the birthday party.

"He is in good health but with saggy skin and loose muscles. We don't ignore aging or ailing giant pandas. We still care for them, love them and try to give them a happy life," assured Wei.

Earlier this year, Jia Jia, the world's oldest female giant panda, celebrated her 37th birthday at the Ocean Park theme park in Hong Kong. 

Before Jia Jai, the record for the oldest giant panda belonged to Du Du, a Chinese panda who was born in 1962, and died at the age of 37 in 1999.

36-years-old giant panda Jia Jia, walks in her enclosure at the Hong Kong Ocean Park, China July 9, 2015 - Sputnik International
World's Oldest Giant Panda Looks Forward to Record-Breaking Birthday
The WWF estimates the average lifespan of a giant panda in the wild at 14-20 years, and up to 30 years in captivity. According to China's latest giant panda census in 2014, there were 1,864 giant pandas in the wild, an increase of 17 percent over the past decade.

"While still very low, this represents a real success story, with numbers increasing from around 1,000 in the late 1970s," said the World Wildlife Fund, which was invited by the Chinese government to help conserve the giant panda population in the 1970s.

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