On 31 July 2012, Ljubljana Zoo welcomed a female red panda.

The female arrived from Salzburg Zoo, and immediately upon arrival she was released into her enclosure, which stands opposite the elephant house and close to the Persian leopards. Her enclosure is part of a natural woodland with a pond and tall trees, while places to climb and hide have also been added for the red panda.
As soon as she was released, the female began to explore her new home. First, she carefully sniffed the ground and climbed the nearest thing available, but was soon contentedly tackling bamboo leaves, which are her favourite food.
Providing bamboo is going to be a demanding task for the Zoo management. Three times a month, fresh bamboo branches will be brought from a bamboo plantation near Nova Gorica. The branches will be stored in a refrigerator as otherwise the panda will not eat them. She must receive at least 200 grams of fresh bamboo leaves a day, with supplements of special panda brickettes, chicken or eggs.

The female red panda is over a year old, and the Zoo plans to bring in a male next year.

As a species, the red panda is severely endangered in the wild. Rotterdam Zoo holds a pedigree book of all the red pandas in European zoos and uses it to recommend which pandas should mate, to avoid breeding between individuals that are too closely related.

Red panda (Ailurus fulgens fulgens)

Red pandas live in high mountain bamboo forests, where rhododendron, oak, spruce, the hemlock conifer, walnut and sycamore also grow. They can inhabit areas from 1,800 to 4,800 metres from the Himalayas to southern China.

They are classified among raccoons and bears. The red panda is a dietary specialist. Although it is a bear with a simple stomach and a short intestine, it mainly feeds on leaves and bamboo shoots. These plant foods are harder to digest, and so it eats a lot relative to its body weight in order to obtain sufficient nutrition. It also eats grass, fruit, roots, acorns and lichen and they are known to supplement their diet with young birds, eggs, small rodents, and insects on occasion.

They grow to 60cm in length and up to 5kg. They can live to 14 years of age.

Red pandas breed from January to March. After an incubation period of 145 days, the female gives birth to a litter of up to four babies in a hollow tree. The cubs have fur at birth, but are blind and helpless. They leave the burrow for the first time when they are three months old. The cubs become independent at around five months, and sexually mature at about 18 to 20 months.

Red pandas are mainly active at night, and are solitary and territorial animals. They mark the boundaries of their territories. They mostly sleep in trees during the day.

They have very large ears, excellent hearing, and long whiskers which they use to feel their way around at night. On their forelegs they have an additional sixth finger, formed from an extended wrist bone and which they use like a thumb as it opposes the other fingers. The thumb is used to grip food and put it into the mouth. In addition, the thumb helps them to climb tree trunks with their heads down, which only a few animals are capable of.

Predators of adult red pandas include snow leopards, while yellow-necked marten take the young. The pandas advertise their presence by a kind of snoring and purring, while breathing like cats with they are frightened.

Red pandas are endangered due to human destruction of the forests where they live but also due to poaching as people hunt them for their pelts and as domestic pets.