When a mother panda gives birth to twins at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the team uses a little 1) .... of hand to keep both cubs alive.  Shortly after birth, keepers remove one of the cubs, tricking the mother into thinking she only has one baby. The twins are then 2) ....up to 10 times a day to maintain the single baby panda illusion. One of the cubs is with the mother almost all the time while the other is kept in an incubator and fed on formula milk. Half of all panda births result in twins, however, it is very rare for both cubs to survive as giant pandas almost always abandon a cub if they give birth to more than one. The reason is that they don’t have sufficient milk or energy to care for two so they focus their attention on the strongest one.3).... a cub is difficult for pandas as they subsist on bamboo, which has a low nutritional value and mothers need to balance their own survival with that of the cub. The process of 4) .... the panda to give up her young requires great patience from the keepers. They use a bowl of honey water to 5) .... the mother, while they attempt to remove the child. Not wishing to distress the panda, this negotiation has to be repeated until the panda trusts the keeper enough to let them handle her cub. This method opens up the possibility of a 100% survival rate in 6).... panda cubs. It’s a problem that the Chengdu Research Base has been 7) .... for decades. Prior to 1990, the survival rate among twins was only 30% despite a recent recovery, pandas are still under a severe threat due to their loss of  habitat.