Giant panda Long Xin gave birth to a cub on Thursday morning at the China Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Though this is the first time for Long Xin, who will be five years old in a couple of days, to be a mother, she seems very skillful to take care of her baby, sources with the center said.

She embraced her baby with her arms immediately after the baby was born at around 4 AM Thursday, and then licked the "crying" cub with her tongue, the sources said, adding the center has given Long Xin a nickname "talented mother" as many pandas will neglect their babies when they first become a mother.

As workers at the center can not reach the new born, the weight and gender of the cub remain unknown, the source said, but both mother and baby pandas are in a good health condition.

This is the seventh panda born at the Wolong center this year, the sixth was born in Monday night.

A female panda normally becomes sexually mature at four to five years old. They only get pregnant once a year, giving birth to one or two cubs at one time.

Panda gestation lasts 83 to 181 days. As pandas mate only in three or four days between March and May each year, they have a relatively low fertility rate.

At the end of last year, 163 giant pandas were raised in captivity throughout China with more than half of them living at the Wolong center. The number of wild pandas in China is more than 1,590.

The Wolong Nature Reserve, founded in 1963, is the largest panda protection zone in China. Covering 200,000 hectares, the nature reserve is world-renowned as the home for pandas.

(Xinhua News Agency August 12, 2005)