The final pandas to share about from the No1 House – and they were my first youngsters of Chengdu Panda Base on this visit, it’s Xiao Ya Tou 小丫头 and her 2023-born twins! Since my visit the cubs have now been announced as named CC and 99 … not sure how much I get that, but I guess there’s good reasoning behind it! When I was there there was only a sign for Xiao Ya Tou, you wouldn’t know there were her cubs in with her unless you saw them – and it’s a big yard with lots of plant coverage so they could easily hide away out of sight. Now, however, there is new signage so visitors know there are 3 pandas living there.

I actually saw Xiao Ya Tou last year, she was living in the Sunshine Nursery House and appeared to be alone there. I speculated that she was perhaps mother of some of the cubs I had seen, that turned out to be true and now she lives outside of the nursery with those cubs, what cuties^ These 3 were all about the bamboo when I saw them on both days of my visit – always all outside and always sitting in amongst a big pile of bamboo! On the second day of my visit one of the cubs thought they could have the piece of bamboo that mum was eating, they definitely thought wrong, she wasn’t letting go of that bamboo!

Xiao Ya Tou is still very cute and round, much like how I saw her last time. And actually it’s quite fitting that she was in the same house as Meng Yuan and Meng Xiang as she’s their aunt, being their mum’s (Meng Meng) sister. They share mum Er Ya Tou.