People from all over the UK are flocking to see the amazing Giant Pandas now in residence at Edinburgh Zoo – but a group of Galstonyoungsters has pipped them all at the post!

As official adopters of Yang Guang and Tian Tian, pupils from Loudoun Academy were given an exclusive preview of their panda ‘children’ on Thursday, before Scotland’s hottest new arrivals went on show to a frantic public on Friday, amidst scenes of panda-monium as hundreds queued.

The Galston school’s Fast Track 2010 class adopted the eight-year-old pandas on Chinese New Year in February 2011 as part of a modern studies project, while the exotic bears were still in China. The pandas will spend the next 10 years at the zoo, 5,000 miles from their previous home in Ya’an reserve, Chengdu.

The kids have been bamboozled by Yang Guang and Tian Tian’s sudden meteoric rise to international stardom – yet delighted by the opportunities their bear connection now offers.

Teacher Julia Preston, who accompanied the eight pupils on their 100 mile round-trip to Edinburgh, said: “We had an amazing time and were treated as honoured guests by the zoo.

“I initially received a letter inviting just two people to view the pandas before they went public. I wrote to ask if the organisers would consider nine tickets, as I hadn’t the heart to tell the kids that some would not be able to go. Luckily, the zoo agreed!”

The youngsters worked with the zoo’s education team to make sensory toys containing tasty snacks for some of the animals, including purple-faced leaf monkeys of Sri Lanka and Negros Island Warty Pigs.

But the highlight of the day was their first amazing sight of the dark-eyed, cuddly creatures. Male Yang Guang and female Tian Tian were bearing up in their new surroundings – but were viewed separately by the youngsters.

The pandas have to be kept apart till their brief breeding season – just two days of the year – in February. Until then, the pandas can only peek at each other through a hole in the wall which separates them in their new £300,000 enclosure.

So impressed were the youngsters with the pandas that they are now working to raise funds to help sun bears of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos – so-called because of the yellow crescents on their chests – who are often ill-treated in their native lands. The kids hope to adopt the zoo’s sun bears, for whom they previously collected 30 jars of honey.