Humans are not the only ones tiring of confinement during the coronavirus pandemic – a panda escaped from his enclosure at Copenhagen Zoo in the Danish capital on Monday.

Xing Er, a six-year-old male panda – soon to be seven – then took a tour of the zoo, which was closed at the time.

He was spotted on a surveillance video “leaving his enclosure, slipping under an electric fence”, said zoo spokesman Jacob Munkholm Hoeck.

The animal wandered around the zoo until an employee noticed it and called a security team.

Hoeck said: “The veterinarian of the zoo anaesthetised the panda and he was brought back to the enclosure.

“There he was given an antidote and woke up a couple of minutes later.”

Xing Er was not harmed and there were no human injuries.

The zoo’s chief scientist Bengt Holst said in a statement that security around the enclosure will be “carefully examined” to “make sure [it] doesn’t happen again”.

Xing Er and his female mate Mao Sun – who did not take part in his escape – arrived in Denmark in April last year, on loan from the Chinese city of Chengdu.

They are a part of the “panda diplomacy” programme set up by China which consists of lending pandas to foster relations with trading partners.