Berlin Zoo’s twin pandas Leni and Lotti celebrated their second birthday on Friday with a three-tier cake made of frozen vegetable juice.
The sisters curiously sniffed the birthday snack, then licked and nibbled at it, thoroughly dismantling the cake made from beetroot and carrot juice.
In the end, however, the pandas’ favourite food – bamboo – proved more interesting. Together with their mother Meng Meng, they munched away industriously, spattering their white panda fur with beetroot stains.
They received the cake a day before their actual birthday on August 22. On Saturday morning, visitors will be treated to a commentated feeding of the giant pandas.
Leni and Lotti are the second set of panda offspring for Berlin Zoo and for Germany altogether. Some years earlier, Meng Meng gave birth to twins Pit and Paule, who now live in China.
The bears, like their parents, are the property of the People’s Republic of China, which lends the animals to selected countries under a scheme referred to as “panda diplomacy.”
Leni and Lotti will also head to China one day, said mammal curator Florian Sicks.