Edinburgh Zoo’s female giant panda Tian Tian, also known as Sweetie, has been voted the "favourite panda outside of China", scooping gold in the "panda version of the Oscars".
Results were announced at 10am Eastern Standard Time (3pm GMT) in a special ceremony at the panda enclosure in Zoo Atlanta.
Votes came in from around the world for the Giant Panda Zoo Awards 2013, which was launched last year. Tian Tian won first place with 19% of the category votes.
Edinburgh's male panda, Yang Guang (Sunshine), took silver medal in the same category last year in the awards' inaugural year.
The two pandas, on loan from China, marked their second year anniversary in Edinburgh in December. Hopes are high that Tian Tian (view "pandacam") will give birth to Britain's first panda cub as part of a global captive breeding plan. About 1,600 pandas are believed to remain in the wild.
Hopes were raised in the Autumn that Tian Tian would produce a cub after being artificially inseminated. However, the Zoo announced that Tian Tian lost her pregnancy in October.
This is Tian Tian’s second award after appearing in the 2011 BBC’s Women of the Year List alongside names like Pippa Middleton and Adele.
Alison Maclean, Team Leader for Giant Pandas, said: “We think it’s absolutely amazing that everybody feels the same way about our female panda as we do; it’s just great and thank you to everyone for voting for us.”
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