Two giant pandas left Beijing today to fly to the Atlanta Zoo in the United States where they are going to stay for ten years.

Jiu Jiu, one of the two giant pandas is from the well-known Mei Mei family, the biggest giant panda family in the world.

Jiu Jiu was born on September 9 in 1997 in Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center. He is the third generation of giant pandas that have been bred through a program of artificial insemination.

His grandmother, Mei Mei, became famous in the 1980s for giving birth to nine cubs over the past thirteen years through artificial insemination. Seven of the cubs survived.

In 1990s, Jiu Jiu's aunt Qing Qing broke her sister's record and gave birth to 10 cubs. All of these cubs have survived.

To date, the Mei Mei family has become the biggest giant panda family in the world.

Jiu Jiu's mother, Ya Ya, is one of the twin pandas conceived by Mei Mei. She was born in 1990 when the 11th Asian Games was held in Beijing and she was very popular at home and abroad at that time.

Jiu Jiu is Ya Ya's first child. After he was born, scientists in the breeding center arranged his mother to breastfeed him for a whole year, seven months longer than other giant pandas.

Jiu Jiu weighed 50 kilograms when he was only one year old and has so far been in very good health surpassing his other peers.

Experts predict that the two will most likely have babies after they reached sexual maturity.

A giant panda lives an average life span of about 25 years reaching its maturity at about four to five years old.

The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered animal species. It has a very low reproductive capacity. A female giant pandas become pregnant once a year and has one or two cubs each time.

China has tried many ways to increase the number of pandas and succeeded in breeding the first giant panda by artificial insemination in 1963. Since then, 12 zoos and one animal reserve have bred about 140 giant pandas, but the survival rate has been a rather low 29 percent.

There are now about 1,000 giant pandas in existence. Eighty percent of them are found in Sichuan province. There are over 120 living in captivity. Five of these live in the United States.