'Panda Express' Arrives in Atlanta

The pandas have landed. Ping Ping and Fu Shuang touched down Sunday morning at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport aboard a dedicated "FedEx Panda Express" flight from China. Zoo Atlanta called it a "historic moment," CBS News reports. The pair later arrived safely at the zoo, their home for the next 10 years, per WTSB. They're on loan from China under a government-to-government agreement announced Thursday during Chinese President Xi Jinping's summit with President Trump, marking the zoo's return to panda hosting after a two-year gap.

It will be a bit before the pandas' official introduction. The 4-year-old bears will spend about a month in quarantine inside the zoo's new panda complex, with no public debut scheduled yet, per CBS. Ping Ping, a male, is described as having strikingly dark eye patches; Fu Shuang, a female, has a slightly prominent forehead, per China's Xinhua News Agency. They left the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, a key node in China's decades-long "panda diplomacy" strategy, on Saturday. Zoo Atlanta joins the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and the San Diego Zoo as the only US zoos currently hosting the species.