inro roanoke, virginia, getting adorable new residents. red pandas known as cat bears. brother and sister born to a mother who has lived at the zoo for a while and joined by sampson a new york city transplant moving down there from central park. they re consider vulnerable because their native habitats in asia are being destroyed. a, they re adorable. but another new york city resident going down south for the weather. all right. it s been a nice winter so far, although tomorrow is the official start of winter. well, that s going to do it for us. a healthy you and carol alt is up next. arthel is back at 4:30 eastern.
another favorite topic, baby animals. that s right. this time we are off to the zoo in auckland, new zealand. it just introduced a new pair of red pandas, so cute. the cubs will be four weeks old tomorrow. they don t have names yet. zookeepers won t know their sex until sometime in march. oh, my good ness is a 4-year-old red panda. look at that little guy. they are dependent upon their mother, like many others. they have an estimated global population of around 10,000. not too many of these little cute guys out there. they are only 400 grams. they live about 8 to 12 years, but they live longer if they are in zoos. so maybe that s where they will stay for a little bit and have nice long lives. yeah. and keep on being adorable. coming up, who doesn t love
the biggest danger is if he ate inappropriate food. reporter: bamboo or treats prepared by his keepers. for the moment, rusty has no visible signs of injury or illness. we pressed a zoo spokeswoman on another key question. how in the world do you lose a red panda, how did it happen? we don t know right now, complete honesty, we do not know. that habitat has housed red pandas several years. no one has escaped before. the habitat is constructed to keep red pandas in and people out. reporter: a possible clue, red pandas are called natural climbers, tree dwellers. could rusty have used a tree to climb out of the exhibit behind me? the team came here after he escaped and found no obvious route out, but they are not ruling it out as a possibility and one possibility could be here, the electric fence, there is a tree up there on one side of the electric fence that kind of hangs over. that could have been one of the escape routes. zoo zo officials say they ll
rusty is safe and sound. the big question now is how rusty managed to run away. reporter: captured, crated, on the way home. rusty the red panda, not even a year old, missing from washington s national zoo for several hours. he made his way into a busy neighborhood off zoo grounds before being captured safely. brandi smith, a senior zoo curator involved in the capture. we were able to walk up to him. we sent the keepers, with which he s most familiar, so the keepers called his name, he was familiar to him, they calmed him down. we were able to capture him in a net, transfer him to a crate and took him to our veterinary hospital. reporter: red pandas are listed as vulnerable with 10,000 or less in the world. rusty was born in captivity. could he have survived on his own? we asked smith what dangers he faced outside the zoo.
in complete honesty, we do not know. they have housed red pandas before. no one escaped before. it s to keep pandas in and people out. reporter: a possible clue? they are natural climbers, tree dwellers. would he have used a tree to climb out? a team came after he escaped and found no obvious route out. they are not saying it s not a possibility. the electric fence, there s a tree up there on one side that hangs over. that could have been an escape route. zoo officials will look at surveillance cameras, try to trace his movements between 6:00 p.m. sunday when he was last sited and 7:30 the next morning when they noticed he was gone. we will not let this happen again. reporter: he shows no sign of illness, zoo officials will keep