Jia Jia, oldest living panda in captivity, celebrates her 37th birthday (That’s 110 years old in panda years!)

If you’re a critter and celebrating a birthday, the bestest present ever, it would seem, is ice cake.

To celebrate Jia Jia’s birthday, the oldest-ever giant panda in captivity, got a towering birthday cake made from ice and fruit juice.

Jia Jia is easily the oldest living giant panda as she turned 37 earlier this week.

That’s about 110 years old in human terms. She’s so old she has made it into the Guinness Book of World Records twice, once as the oldest panda living in captivity and she’s also in the record books as the oldest panda ever living in captivity. images-1

Jia Jia was born in the wild in Sichuan, China, in 1978 and was given to Hong Kong in 1999 to mark the semi-autonomous city’s handover by Britain two years earlier. She’s been living in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park enclosure since then.

The previous record was held by a male panda called Du Du, who was also caught in the wild and died in July 1999 aged 36 in a zoo in China’s Hubei province.

Vet Paola Martelli said in a story in the Guardian that Jia Jia was still “moving about” though she suffered from cataracts and high blood pressure. “She is sleeping more, so is doing everything less. But she is ageing gracefully, just like your grandma,” she said.

Because she eats less bamboo she relies on fibre supplements, Martelli added. images-2

Jia Jia, whose name translates as “excellence”, picked at fruit slices and bamboo around the ice cake to celebrate her big day.

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Peg Fong is also in recovery from newspapers

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