CHENGDU, Feb. 11 -- A wild giant panda was captured by infrared cameras several times in a nature reserve in southwest China's Sichuan Province, according to the reserve authorities.

The cameras in the Wujiao nature reserve recorded traces of the wild giant panda at an altitude of nearly 2,800 meters between mid-December 2020 and mid-January 2021.

One of the clips, shot on Jan. 8, showed that the black-and-white bear stared at the camera curiously and fiddled with it before walking away.

A few seconds before the panda left the range of the camera, it slipped when it tried to climb down a rock.

Located in the southeast of Jiuzhaigou County, the Wujiao nature reserve covers a total area of some 37,000 hectares, which are a part of the Giant Panda National Park.

The number of wild giant pandas in China has increased from 1,114 in the 1980s to 1,864, according to a survey on the panda population. Meanwhile, the protected panda habitat area has almost doubled to 2.58 million hectares, protecting 66.8 percent of giant pandas living in the wild. Enditem