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Oldest Captive Panda Dies in China

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<i> Associated Press</i>

Dudu, the world’s oldest giant panda in captivity, has died in a zoo in central China’s Hubei province, the state-run New China News Agency said Friday.

Hot summer weather might have contributed to the 37-year-old panda’s death Thursday in Wuhan, the agency said. She also suffered from epilepsy and had been monitored 24 hours a day by a team with emergency medical equipment, it said.

The average life span of a wild giant panda is about 15 years, and pandas in captivity live for 25 years. That made Dudu “a super god of longevity,” the news agency said.

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China has only about 1,000 wild and captive pandas left.

Born in 1962 in a nature reserve, Dudu was first transferred to a zoo in the southwestern city of Chengdu and then moved to Wuhan in 1972.

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