Beijing - A student in southern China is the latest intruder to discover that captive pandas are not as cuddly as they look, after he was savaged at a zoo in the city of Guilin, state media said on Saturday.

The student, identified only by the surname Liu, scaled a two- metre fence into the panda enclosure at Guilin's Qixing Park on Friday afternoon, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Liu was attacked as he approached an 80-kilo male giant panda and required hospital treatment, including surgery, for serious bites, the agency said.

"The panda, Yangyang, was wide awake," a park worker told the agency. "Apparently scared by the intruder, he bit at Liu's arms and legs."

Liu, 20, was quoted as saying in hospital that Yangyang was "so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack. I don't remember how many bites I got."

Zoo keepers rushed into the enclosure to rescue Liu and calm the panda, the agency said.

The attack is the latest of several by captive giant pandas reported in China.

Last year, A 15-year-old boy suffered serious leg injuries after 110-kilogram panda Gugu mauled him inside its enclosure at Beijing Zoo.

Gugu also bit and seriously injured the leg of a drunken man who climbed into the enclosure to hug it the previous year.

Also in 2006, a giant panda cub bit off part of an American woman's thumb when it panicked during feeding at a nature reserve in south-western China's Sichuan province.

More than 180 giant pandas live in captivity around the world, and about 1,590 remain in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan, according to Chinese government statistics.

The animals are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate. (dpa)