Fota Wildlife Park has announced the birth of three critically-endangered red panda cubs who have spent the last few weeks in their nesting box at the Co Cork site.
The three cubs - one male and two female - were born early in June to mother Laxmi and father Grga, who are both five years old.
In the next two to three weeks, the cubs will start to venture outside their nesting box for brief periods in early morning or late evening under the watchful eye of their mother.
The red panda is critically endangered, with as few as 2,500 mature individuals believed to be remaining in the wild.
Recent estimates suggest that there has been a 50 per cent decrease in numbers over the last 20 years alone.
Fota said the birth of the cubs highlights the importance of its participation in the international breeding programme for many species that are endangered or threatened in the wild.
The cubs’ mother Laxmi came to Fota from Longleat in England in July 2019 while their father Grga moved to the park a month earlier having been in Zagreb Zoo in Croatia.
Fota Wildlife Park is now home to seven red pandas who live in a specially designed habitat in the Asian Sanctuary.
The red panda has long soft brownish fur with black and white marking and black eyes. Its diet is mainly of bamboo and Fota Wildlife Park feeds its pandas with its own bamboo grown within the park.
The park is calling on the public to name the new arrivals. Suggestions can be entered at fotawildlife.ie/blog
Participants are in with a chance to win one of three year-long passes to Fota.
The red panda cubs join a succession of births the past few months at Fota, including cheetahs, ring-tailed lemurs, black and white colobus monkeys, a bison and a giraffe.