Panda Cubs at Tokyo Zoo Get their Names, to Debut in January

This Friday, Aug. 11, 2017 photo released by Tokyo Zoological Park Society Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, shows a giant panda cub during a health check at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, two months after the female cub born on June 12. (Tokyo Zoological Park Society via AP)
This Friday, Aug. 11, 2017 photo released by Tokyo Zoological Park Society Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, shows a giant panda cub during a health check at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, two months after the female cub born on June 12. (Tokyo Zoological Park Society via AP)
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Panda Cubs at Tokyo Zoo Get their Names, to Debut in January

This Friday, Aug. 11, 2017 photo released by Tokyo Zoological Park Society Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, shows a giant panda cub during a health check at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, two months after the female cub born on June 12. (Tokyo Zoological Park Society via AP)
This Friday, Aug. 11, 2017 photo released by Tokyo Zoological Park Society Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, shows a giant panda cub during a health check at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, two months after the female cub born on June 12. (Tokyo Zoological Park Society via AP)

Giant panda twins born at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo in June got their names Friday — Lei Lei for the female cub, and Xiao Xiao for her brother. They were chosen from hundreds of thousands of suggestions sent from fans around Japan.

The twin cubs, which were palm-size pink creatures when born on June 23, have grown and now have their unique black-and-white blocks, with black fur around their eyes, ears and limbs, said The Associated Press.

Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike announced their names during her weekly news conference. She said Xiao Xiao means “the light of dawn turning brighter," and Lei Lei portrays a bud becoming a beautiful flower and developing a bright future.

“Together, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei can mean bright dawn leading to the future. I think their names have a very bright image,” she said.

In a short video that Koike played, the siblings in a baby cot cuddled, crawled slowly and went to sleep. “Adorable,” she said, and played the video twice.

Like elsewhere in the world, pandas are hugely popular in Japan. Before deciding their names, Tokyo officials even set up a name selection committee.

Officials from the zoo and the Tokyo government chose the names from more than 190,000 entries sent from around Japan and after consulting with the Giant Panda National Park in China, which owns the pandas.

Both of them weigh about 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) — nearly 50 times their weight at birth — and about 60 centimeters (2 feet) long, according to the zoo.
Koike said the panda cubs are still raised inside the zoo but their debut is expected in January when they turn 6 months, along with their mother panda.



Eggs Are Less Likely to Crack When Dropped on Their Side, According to Science

Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
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Eggs Are Less Likely to Crack When Dropped on Their Side, According to Science

Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)

Eggs are less likely to crack when they fall on their side, according to experiments with over 200 eggs.

What does this mean for the best way to crack an egg for breakfast? Not much, since a break around the middle is the best way to get the golden yolk and runny whites to ooze out.

But scientists said it could help with hard-boiling eggs in a pot: Dropping eggs in horizontally may be less likely to cause a stray crack that can unleash the egg's insides in a puffy, cloudy mess.

It's commonly thought that eggs are strongest at their ends — after all, it's how they're packaged in the carton. The thinking is that the arc-shaped bottom of an egg redirects the force and softens the blow of impact.

But when scientists squeezed eggs in both directions during a compression test, they cracked under the same amount of force.

"The fun started when we thought we would get one result and then we saw another," said Hudson Borja da Rocha with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped run the experiments.

The researchers also ran simulations and dropped eggs horizontally and vertically from three short heights up to 0.4 inches (10 millimeters).

The egg result? The ones dropped horizontally cracked less.

"The common sense is that the egg in the vertical direction is stronger than if you lay the egg down. But they proved that's not the case," said materials scientist Marc Meyers with the University of California, San Diego who was not involved with the new study.

Scientists found that the egg's equator was more flexible and absorbed more of the energy of the fall before cracking. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Communications Physics.

Eggs are also usually nestled top-down into homemade contraptions for egg drop challenges as part of school STEM projects, which partially inspired the new study. It's not yet clear whether the new results will help protect these vulnerable eggs, which are dropped at much loftier heights.

It's a bit counterintuitive that the oblong side of an egg could hold up better against a tumble, said study co-author Tal Cohen with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Countless broken eggs show "the courage to go and challenge these very common, accepted notions," Cohen said.