Visitors can now see the recently arrived female red panda in the enclosure, who is intended to be the future mate of our resident male, Bendegúz. The young panda came to us from a zoo in Germany.
Since 1990, the Budapest Zoo has been home to red pandas, also known as red cat-bears or lesser pandas. Over the past decades, many breeding animals have lived here, and we have successfully raised several litters of this endangered species.
The latest news from our red panda habitat is that a new female, Dayah, has joined our resident male, Bendegúz. Dayah was born on June 5, 2024, in Germany, at the Görlitz Zoo in Saxony. She arrived in Budapest at the end of May, and after completing the required quarantine and gradually getting used to Bendegúz, she has now fully settled into her new home: the red panda enclosure on the side of the Great Rock. At their first meeting, there was a little paw-slapping between the two, but this is considered completely normal behavior.
Bendegúz, who is six years old, has lived at our Zoo since 2020. His previous partner, the elderly Aurora—who also gave birth to his cub—sadly passed away earlier this year. That is why, within the framework of the European breeding program for red pandas, we welcomed a new female. Of course, Dayah is still too young to become a mother right away, but if all goes well, we can hopefully expect new red panda cubs within a year or two.
The red panda is native to the forests of the Himalayan region in central Asia. From a cultural history perspective, it is interesting to note that the word “panda” originally referred only to this species. Later, when zoologists discovered a much larger, black-and-white bear-like animal with paws quite similar in structure to the red panda’s, they named it the giant panda. So originally, the red animal was “the panda,” while the black-and-white one was the “giant panda.” Over time, however, the giant panda became far more widely known, and the red panda was almost forgotten by the public. As a result, the word “panda” came to mean, for most people, the giant panda alone. In fact, when the first red pandas arrived at our Zoo in 1990, visitors were surprised to learn that “panda” does not only refer to the black-and-white giant panda, but that there is also a red panda. Our Zoo has played a key role in making this charming species well known to the Hungarian public today.
Our keepers also carry out regular training sessions with the pandas. We even presented a short film about what this looks like last year.
