Romantic Lunar New Year for Taiwan zoo panda couple

Taiwan's top animal attraction, panda couple Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, will be given some privacy over the Lunar New Year - in the hope they will finally breed.

Taipei Zoo is to put the pandas, who have attracted more than three million visitors since their arrival from China in late 2008, in the same enclosure after the female panda, Yuan Yuan, recently went into heat.

"Although visitors may not be able to see Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan during the Lunar New Year, we hope they will join us in wishing them success in producing offspring," the Taipei Zoo said in a statement yesterday.

Taiwan has a special incentive to encourage the furry couple to do what so often fails to come naturally for pandas, as it will be allowed to keep any cubs that they may produce, zoo officials have said.

Beijing usually loans its pandas to foreign zoos and any progeny must be sent back to China.

China's decision to offer Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan to Taiwan was a symbolic gesture to show improved ties between the former arch enemies, governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.