The Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province revealed that with three years' of training, giant panda Xiang Xiang, the first human-raised giant panda in world that was taught with skills of living in wild environment, was able to live in nature.

This signifies that China's human-fed giant panda has for the first time gained capability of living in the field, China News Service told today.

Workers at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center said that with the help of the global positioning system (GPS), scientists confirmed that Xiang Xiang was able to select its own living habitat. In April 2005, scientists had already stopped giving food to the giant panda, which began to live by itself in the center.

Now Xiang Xiang seems to have adapted to the wild environment and is quite alert to things nearby. Scientists once approached Xiang Xiang to a distance of 50 meters, and the giant panda, by its cute auditory sense, was conscious of the situation.

In the next step, scientists will teach the giant panda on how to identify its natural enemy and the skills of communicating with other wild giant pandas. After this, scientists will choose an appropriate time to free it into the nature.
 
(Chinanews.cn February 7, 2006)