Australia to welcome two Chinese giant pandas

CANBERRA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Wang Wang and Funi are due to arrive in Adelaide on Saturday at 7:45 a.m. local time after a long trip from their home at the Panda Protection and Research Center at Ya'an in China's Sichuan Province.

The two giant pandas coming to the Adelaide Zoo will prove a bigger tourist attraction, Zoos South Australia's president Heather Caddick said on Wednesday.

"Pandas really are the world's most recognized and loved endangered animal," she said, "If you watch them you can see why, they're natural comics. You could really spend hours just watching them. There's something enigmatic about them."

Premier of South Australia Mike Rann, Cultural counselor of Chinese embassy Ke Yasha, Chief Executive of South Australia Adelaide & Monarto Zoos Dr Chris West and President of Zoos South Australia Heather Caddick will be at the airport welcoming the two animals.

Traveling with them will be Chinese keepers and vets as well as Adelaide Zoo keepers who have been getting to know the pair over the past few weeks.

Caddick said the arrival of the pandas was expected to lift zoo attendances by about 70 percent, attracting extra visitors from both interstate and overseas.

The pandas will spend the next month in quarantine, ensconced inside a new 8 million dollars (7.4 million U.S. dollars) panda enclosure which includes some innovative features such as refrigerated rocks to ensure they can handle the heat of an Australian summer.

Their first public appearance comes on Dec. 13, when Governor-General Quentin Bryce officially opens their new home.

China's President Hu Jintao offered the pandas as a goodwill gesture during a 2007 visit to Australia. The two pandas will live at Adelaide Zoo for 10 years for a joint research program, according to a bilateral agreement signed in 2007.

Pandas, dubbed as unofficial national mascot of China, are often viewed as a sign of friendship.

Giant pandas, known for being sexually inactive, are among the world's most endangered animals due to shrinking habitat. During Wang Wang and Funi's time in Adelaide, zoo officials will focus their attention on producing panda cubs.

There are about 1,590 pandas living in China's wild, mostly in Sichuan and the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu.