Daily Times

A pair of red panda twins born in Australia made their first short public appearance on Wednesday at Melbourne Zoo when they were brought in for a check-up and vaccinations.

The mother Roshani, meaning light in Nepalese, gave birth to the twin cubs Keta and Mandu on December 10.

Keta means boy and Mandu is short for Kathmandu, both Nepalese words.

The doctors vaccinated the twins against feline enteritis and two forms of feline respiratory disease, according to Melbourne Zoo.

At the check-up, the veterinarians confirmed they were both male and microchipped them for health records.

Mandu weighs 853 grams and Keta weighs 815 gramme, good weights for their age, the zoo said in a statement.

The keepers then returned the cubs to their nest box, where they will be under constant monitoring through a live video feed.

Eight-year-old Roshani came to Melbourne Zoo from her birthplace, Perth Zoo, in 2009 and her mate, Seba, 5, was born at Taronga Zoo and arrived in Melbourne in 2014, according to the zoo.

Red pandas are estimated to number around 10,000 and are classified as endangered. They are found mostly in Nepal and China and live in tree hollows in remote high-altitude forests.

Loss of their forest habitat and poaching are the two top reasons for their declining number.

The red panda, also called lesser panda, red bear-cat and red cat-bear, is a small arboreal mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China that has been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as its wild population is estimated at less than 10,000 mature individuals.