The world’s only captive (圈养) brown giant panda, Qizai, has been taking more exercise in preparation for the upcoming breeding (繁育) season. He is encouraged to stand up by keepers who place food on the end of a stick held just out of his reach. Panda experts believe that strengthening the giant animal’s legs will improve his ability to breed successfully.

The world’s first brown panda was discovered in 1985 in the Qinling Mountains. All photographs of wild brown pandas were taken in the area, which they were named after. The Qinling giant panda, first recognized in 2005, is a subspecies of giant panda. As well as its brown and white fur, it has a smaller and rounder skull and a shorter nose than the more familiar Sichuan giant panda.

Qizai, whose name means the seventh son, was found as two-month-old cub, weak and alone, by researchers in a nature reserve in the Qinling Mountains. For his safety, the researchers took him to the nearby Shanxi Rare Wildlife Rescue Centre where he was given medical treatment and fed on milk from other pandas.

There are 1, 864 giant pandas in the wild, according to World Wildlife. They live mainly in bamboo forests high in the mountains of south-west China, mostly in Sichuan province, but they can also be found in Shanxi province, where Qizai is from. He was previously thought to be the only living brown panda in the world until a wild panda with the same colour pattern was spotted roaming in a nature reserve in Shanxi in March, 2018. Up to now spotting brown pandas in the wild has taken place no more than ten times, all of which were in the central Qinling Mountains.

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