See the Cutest Photos of Three Red Panda Cubs Born at the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute This Summer

At one of her earliest medical check-ups, the female red panda cub stayed pretty quiet. But that changed when animal care staff moved her or did something she didn’t like. Then, she would let out a low-pitched snorting vocalization called a “huff-quack.” It revealed she was “kind of feisty,” says Jessica Kordell, the assistant curator of carnivores at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, to Smithsonian magazine.

When the team returned the cub to her nest box after the exam, “based on what we could see on camera, I think she was huff-quacking at her mom, too,” Kordell says. The first births came on May 29, when twins—a male and a female—were born to parents Sequoia and Mow Mow. The single female cub came weeks later, on June 11, to Keahi and Rocket.

Despite their young age, the cubs are starting to show glimmers of personality. The twins are playing a bit with each other, and they whined a lot during their medical exam. But a lot of the time, they “are really just balls of fur that eat and sleep,” she adds in a social media post.

Red pandas and giant pandas Red pandas are an altricial species—the young are born largely helpless and dependent on their moms for care. Even at more than two months old, these cubs are still nursing and spending most of their time in their nest boxes. The first solid food they’ll eat will be bamboo, and once they start following their moms around, the cubs will learn to eat biscuits and fruit, too.

The first weeks and months for red pandas are a delicate, critical period of their lives. The cubs have a roughly 40 percent mortality rate, and this can be influenced by the mother’s experience level and any disturbance to the family. In the wild, cubs may be susceptible to disease and predators.

Last year, Sequoia and Mow Mow had a litter of two, but the cubs didn’t survive. Keahi and Rocket had two cubs last year, but one died a few days after birth. These new cubs mark the second litters born to each pair of parents, though the males have sired young with other females before.