'Handsome' panda and playful partner captivate Australian zoo-goers

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During the 15 years that Wang Wang and Fu Ni were in Adelaide, there were repeated attempts to produce a cub by mating the pair, but they were unsuccessful.

Hayward said that for Xing Qiu and Yi Lan, it is still early days.

"We're just watching their personalities grow, especially as both are not sexually mature yet. They will become more mature pandas in the coming years, so we will definitely see some developments in their behaviors," she said.

"Giant pandas are solitary animals …they only come together to breed and then they separate, so they live a solitary life outside of a very small breeding window, which can be anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days."

Hayward also noted that Australia has an opposite breeding season to China "because they're in the Northern Hemisphere and we're in the Southern Hemisphere".

"With these two bears we won't be looking for any breeding introductions right away, we have to wait and see what they tell us with their biological clocks," Hayward added.

Fellow zookeeper Jemma Cleere said the young age of the pandas shows.

"They're a lot more playful. Yi Lan loves climbing trees. She's climbing every single tree in that habitat. Xing Qiu loves his water, he loves getting hosed down by keepers," Cleere said.

"He also really loves his food, he loves his bamboo, he will eat anything and everything he can of his bamboo that we offer him, which is really good," she said.