US Atlanta Zoo holds naming ceremony for two giant panda cubs

Two giant panda cubs were named Ya Lun and Xi Lun as the Atlanta Zoo celebrated their 100-day birthday on Monday.

The ceremony was organized to celebrate their survival from infancy and reveal their names that was the result of a vote participated by 23,000 panda fans.

"As we wish Ya Lun and Xi Lun well today, we celebrate the future of their species together," Atlanta Zoo President Raymond King said.

In Chinese, Ya means elegant while Xi means happy. They inherited Lun from their mother Lun Lun.

Xie Fei, the Culture Counselor from China's Houston Consulate, lauded the zoo for their "superb job in raising these healthy baby pandas and facilitating the panda mom's remarkable reproductive achievements, giving altogether five births with seven cubs."

The cubs were born on Sep. 3, and was the sixth and seventh cubs their parents have given birth to since arriving at Atlanta in 1999. They are now both 19 years old, which is middle age for giant pandas.

The cubs didn't appear in the event because of their young age. The zoo expected them to make their debut later this month or in early January.

China's Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which cooperates with foreign institutions to send the Chinese-native animal to live abroad, supplied seven pairs of names to be chosen from, and the zoo said about half of the voters chose Ya Lun and Xi Lun.

Lara Traguboff, a panda fan who attended the event, said she followed the zoo's website for their latest panda updates, "My 75-year-old mother who lives in California is even a bigger panda fan than I am, and she would have the panda cam on and constantly checking up on the cubs."

There are currently four U.S. zoos that hosts the endangered species, the other three are the Memphis Zoo, the National Zoo in Washington D.C. and the San Diego Zoo.

source: Xinhua