Giant panda munches bamboo after dental surgery

Tuantuan with its new fang eat bamboo happily. (Screenshot photo)

The giant panda Tuantuan got a giant new fang on Sunday. 

Tuantuan, who lives at the Taipei Zoo in Taiwan, became the first giant panda in the world to undergo dental surgery in a two-hour operation to fix a broken canine. 

It is not known exactly how he damaged his top left fang but it took a surgical team of some 20 people to replace the decayed tooth with a shiny new one made of titanium.

"Tuantuan now can eat bamboo again and is not feeling uncomfortable with his new tooth," a staffer at the zoo told the Global Times.

Taiwan media reports that Tuantuan is not only the first giant panda to undergo such extensive dental surgery, but the operation will help in the development of wildlife medicine.

Tuantuan's handlers noticed his left upper canine was broken and bleeding during a training exercise.

The medical team suggested that perhaps Tuantuan broke his tooth munching on bamboo that was too hard. A giant panda can consume between 10 and 20 kilograms of bamboo a day. 

Tuantuan's damaged tooth was at a risk of becoming infected and so a titanium replacement perhaps 10 centimeters long was fashioned and implanted during Sunday's surgery that lasted from 10 to 12 p.m., the staffer said.

"Titanium is widely used in medicine for its strength," said Cao Xianshao, a spokesperson for the Taipei Zoo, Xinhua News Agency reported.