Twin pandas celebrated their 1st birthday at the Berlin Zoo with a festive cake made from their favorite fruits and vegetables
- Twin giant pandas Paule and Pit celebrated their first birthday at the Berlin Zoo in Germany on August 31.
- Their zookeepers made them a cake from fruits and vegetables with carrot "candles" and bamboo garnishes.
- When they were born, Paule and Pit each weighed less than half a pound, and now they're more than 60 pounds.
- It is rare for panda twins to both survive after birth, making Pit and Paule an unusual pair.
Twin giant pandas Pit and Paule celebrated their 1st birthday at the Berlin Zoo on Monday.
Pit and Paule's zookeepers marked the momentous occasion with a cake made from apples, sweet potatoes, and beetroot. The panda's cake had "candles" made out of carrots and was decorated with bamboo.
"A little hesitantly, Pit and Paule inspected the cake from all sides and licked the ice carefully," Berlin Zoo representative Maximilian Jäger told Insider.
The pile of snow pictured below the cake was a birthday gift from a nearby penguin house, according to a press release from the Berlin Zoo.
Paule and Pit were born to their mother, Meng Meng, on August 31, 2019.
Over the course of their first year, the pandas have "transformed from tiny wriggling pink babies into big strong bears," according to a Berlin Zoo press release.
When they were born, they weighed less than half a pound each. Now, Pit and Paule weigh about 61 pounds, and they're still growing.
Once they're adults, they could weigh between 220 and 330 pounds, according to the World Wildlife Foundation.
Pit and Paule are an unusual pair. Pandas are difficult to breed in captivity, and though they give birth to twins half of the time, both twins rarely survive. This is because the mothers will typically abandon one of the cubs, according to BBC Earth.
The giant panda population is classified as "vulnerable" by the WWF, and there are just 1,864 of the species left in the wild.
Paule and Pit, as well as their mother, Meng Meng, and their father, Jiao Qing, are Germany's only giant pandas. The Berlin Zoo pays an annual conservation fee to keep the pandas, and they will eventually be returned to China.
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