Be sure to reach the end of this article to see the full video!

Panda conservation is no easy task. But this video reveals how conservationists have managed to make a foster mother look after two cubs while she thinks that she’s only looking after one.

There are many challenges that come with increasing the panda population. For instance, did you know that if a panda gives birth to twins, the mother almost always abandons one of the cubs?

Of course, no zoo could just abandon a panda cub. So they have had to resort to some ingenious ways of keeping them alive.

One zoo has come up with the perfect solution to raising two panda twins. A foster mother at the zoo has taken them in. But due to the conservationists, the panda foster mother only thinks she’s looking after one cub.

The two cubs, Quan Quan and Ling Bing, have to alternate their time with the foster mother.

The cubs are three months old, and the conservationists have realized that at this age, an individual cub can be apart from their mother for up to five days.

Therefore, for five days, one cub gets to spend time with their mother while the other one is looked after by humans. After the five days are up, the cubs get switched.

It works by the keepers bringing in a huge pile of bamboo to distract the mother.

Then, as she is eating, the keepers pick up one of the babies and bring the cub to the panda nursery. Then they bring the cub that has been staying in the nursery and place that cub in the cage with the mother.

The mother always goes up to the switched cub and embraces them like they have always been in the cage. As far as the mother knows, she is only fostering one cub.

Footage of the conservationists switching the panda cubs around while distracting the mother then made its way onto YouTube. In no time, this video went viral. To date, it has gained over 3 million views. It also has more than 23,000 likes and 1,100 comments. People have been saying things like this:

Of course, there are many other tips and techniques that come with deceiving panda moms for the good of their cubs.

Another video showed how much more difficult it can be to keep a birth mother unaware that she is looking after twin cubs.

In the above video, the keepers have to distract the mother and secretly switch her cubs around 10 times every single day, because the cubs are both so young that they need their mother’s presence.

Taking the cubs from the mother is a very difficult process, as the mother is almost always holding the cubs, even when being distracted.

Tricks like these are vital for boosting panda numbers. Almost half of all panda births result in twins.

That means that without human intervention, an alarmingly high number of panda cubs would not be able to survive due to the mother abandoning one of them. Thankfully, tricks like this are really making a difference. In recent years, the panda population has increased significantly. In fact, pandas are no longer on the endangered species list. Their population has increased by 17% over the course of a decade. They are still considered vulnerable, however.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Source: BBC Earth, BBC Earth, WWF