A still image taken from surveillance camera footage shows giant panda Yang Yang holding her newly born cub in her mouth in the zoo in Vienna August 23, 2007. [Photo: Reuters]

The giant panda Yang Yang, which came with another male panda Long Hui to Vienna in 2003, on loan from China, gave birth to a cub in the famous Austrian Schoenbrunn Zoo on Thursday, the zoo announced Thursday morning at an impromptu press conference.

It's not only the first procreation of Yang Yang and Long Hui in Vienna, but also Europe's first such event in 25 years, and the last panda born in a European zoo was in 1982 in Madrid, the official said.

Early in the morning, a caretaker heard whimpering noises from the birth box where the 7-year-old female panda Yang Yang currently lives, confirming the tiny cub came to the world.

"The young mother is now taking loving care of her tiny baby, keeping it hidden close to her chest", the zoo said, adding that the gender of the new-born panda, weighing only around 100 grams and measuring 10 centimeters long at birth, was still unknown.

We are incredibly happy that the young cub was born without artificial insemination and that is extremely rare, said the zoo director Dagmar Schratter, pointing out that the female panda "are fertile only for three or four days each year".

Yang Yang and her baby would stay in their box for the next three months, before being presented to the public.

The birth of the cub aroused sensation in Austria, and the media in Austria promptly issued the explosive news, some web site uploaded the video record of the young panda and its mother after the press conference.

The zoo believed that Vienna now had its own baby with star potential, rivaling Berlin's polar bear cub Knut.

Yang Yang and Long Hui came to Vienna in 2003, on loan from China. The newborn will stay in Vienna for at least two years. Its parents will remain in Vienna for another six years.