The Giant Panda reaches adolescence usually by the age of 6-7, but earlier maturity can occur at the age of 4-5 when bred in captivity. Panda breed once a year. From March to May is the mating season for pandas, Sometimes a female may have several males courting her. When this happens, the males fight for the right to mate with female. But shortly after mating, the couple splits up and return to their single lives again. The pregnancy usually takes 3-5 months. In autumn, the mother panda will make careful preparations for her delivery. She finds a shaded, windproof place, usually a hole in a tree trunk or a rock cave, and mats it with dried bamboo branches and leaves. Newborn baby pandas are rather pitiful: eye closed, furless pink skin, long tail and unable to stand. They are extremely tiny and vulnerable when they are born, with an average weight of 100g (ranging from 36g to 200g), which is 1/1000 of that of their mothers. You can imagine how hard it is for the mothers to nourish and raise these weak cubs. If two cubs are born, the mother is capable of raising only one, the mother usually abandons the weaker cub, and it dies soon after birth. Infant mortality is high, baby pandas are susceptible to illness and predators. The low reproductive rate of the Giant Panda and the harsh conditions of the environment put this fragile species in great danger of gradual degeneration and extinction. Cubs are born blind and open their eyes at about 45 days. Young cubs need nurse as many as 12 times per day. Mothers may leave the cub for 3 to 4 hours to feed, leaving the cub vulnerable to predation. At birth, pandas have white skin. Within 2 weeks, their skin turns gray where eventually the hair will be black. Cubs have panda fur condition within one month after birth. During the first weeks of life, mothers never leave their baby. They holds and hugs the baby against their warm bodies, protecting them from harm. The captive panda mothers will do the similar thing. If you see a panda mother licking her baby, she is probably helping the baby pass feces or urine. The cub starts to crawl at 75 to 90 days. Cubs and mothers play: the mother rolls the cub and wrestles with it and the cub climbs on the mother’s back. Cubs start to eat bamboo at 5 months and are weaned at 6 months. The cub weighs 35 kilograms (80 pounds) at one year and lives with its mother until 18 months. A Giant panda cub becomes independent of its mother at about 1 to 1.5 years of age. It leaves its mother’s territory to establish his own fends for itself. The female panda is then able to give birth again. The survival of Giant Panda cubs is totally dependent on the skill of the mother in both protecting them and teaching them the basics of what to eat, where to get it, how to cope with danger and the other skills of living in the wild. Panda’s reach sexually maturity when they are 4.5-6.5 years old. Wild pandas have an average life span of 15 years. The wild Giant Panda’s life is shorter than life spans in zoos. Chinese scientists have reported zoo pandas as old as 35. The Chinese government has set up special research centers to improve captive breeding, such as Wolong Nature Reserve and a much larger giant panda breeding facility near Chengdu. Today, about 140 pandas are maintained in captive settings, with the majority being in China's panda research or reserve centers. Seven (7) giant pandas reside at U.S. zoological facilities – three at the World-Famous San Diego Zoo, two at Zoo Atlanta and two at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. Three reside at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City. There are also captive giant pandas in Japan and Germany. Only about 15 giant pandas live in zoos outside of China and North Korea. In 1980, the first giant panda birth outside China occurred at the Mexico City Zoo.