The black and white cub, who is nearly five months old, went through his paces for five shifts of journalists and cameramen making up his panda paparazzi, stretching on rocks in the enclosure and hiding behind grass.

He splashed through water in his pen and at one stage bounced back up after falling awkwardly off a small rock.

Normally staid Washington has been swooning over Tai Shan, using a webcam posted inside his enclosure to keep tabs on the cute little cub, which now weighs 21 pounds (9.5 kilogrammes).

"Some days he gets up really early, around four or five in the morning, and starts playing like crazy, climbing on his mother, climbing on the rocks," Panda Curator Lisa Stevens said on "The Early Show" on CBS.

"Then other mornings, he sleeps in. So it's very variable."

Tai Shan goes on public display on December 8, and such is his appeal, all 13,000 tickets for a first round of public viewing were snapped up within two hours on the zoo's website.

The baby panda's proud mother, seven-year-old Mei Xiang, was artificially inseminated in March with sperm from Tian Tian, her seven-year-old zoo companion. The pair are on a 10-year loan from China that began in 2000.

Tai Shan, which means "peaceful mountain" in Chinese, will spend two years in Washington's National Zoo before he is returned to China.

The name emerged first in an online poll which pulled in more than 200,000 votes.

Giant panda births are exceedingly rare, and in line with Chinese tradition, the cub was not named until 100 days after its birth, when survival is considered assured.

Tai Shan was born pink and hairless on July 9, and zoo keepers kept up a daily vigil of his first steps, interaction with his mother and other progress, included in a daily online diary and with the webcam.

The first time Tai Shan was pried away from his mother for his first new-born check up on August 2, he weighed 1.82 pounds (0.8 kilogrammes) and measured 12 inches (32 centimetres) long.

By October 12, he had bulked up to 12.7 pounds (5.7 kilogrammes ) and was 25.5 inches (68 centimetres) long and had developed the giant pandas distinctive black spots.

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