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The Giant Panda also called a panda bear or a panda is a bear native to south central China. It is easily recognized by the large, distinctive black patches around its eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. The name "Giant Panda"  is sometimes used to distinguish it from the red panda.

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The giant panda has luxuriant black-and-white fur. Adults measure around 1.2 to 1.9 m (4 to 6 ft) long, including a tail of about 10–15 cm (3.9–5.9 in), and 60 to 90 cm (2.0 to 3.0 ft) tall at the shoulder. Males can weigh up to 160 kg (350 lb).Females (generally 10–20% smaller than males) can weigh as little as 70 kg (150 lb), but can also weigh up to 125 kg (276 lb).Average adult weight is 100 to 115 kg (220 to 254 lb).
The giant panda has a body shape typical of bears. It has black fur on its ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs, arms and shoulders. The rest of the animal's coat is white

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Adult giant pandas have few natural predators other than humans, young cubs are vulnerable to attacks by snow leopards, yellow-throated martens,eagles, feral dogs, and the Asian black bear. Sub-adults weighing up to 50 kg (110 lb) may be vulnerable to predation by leopards

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The panda primarily spends its life roaming and feeding in the bamboo forests of the Qinling Mountains and in the hilly province of Sichuan. Giant panda female is not tolerant of other females in her territory. After mating, the male leaves the female alone to raise the cub.

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The Panda belongs to the order Carnivora, the giant panda's diet is over 99% bamboo. Giant pandas in the wild will occasionally eat other grasses, wild tubers, or even meat in the form of birds, rodents, or carrion. In captivity, they may receive honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, or bananas along with specially prepared food. The average giant panda eats as much as 9 to 14 kg (20 to 30 lb) of bamboo shoots a day.

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The Ailuropoda melanoleuca consists of most extant populations of panda. These animals are principally found in Sichuan and display the typical stark black and white contrasting colors.

The Qinling panda, A. m. qinlingensis is restricted to the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi The typical black and white pattern of Sichuan giant pandas is replaced with a dark brown versus light brown pattern.

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Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Species: A.Melanoleuca

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The first western person people learned of the Giant Panda on the 11th March 1869 when a French Missionary, Armand David, received Panda skin from a hunter.
The first western person to see a living Giant Panda was a German zoologist called Hugo Weigold in 1916

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Habitats, Population in zoos           and the Wild.

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Habitats, Population in zoos           and the Wild.

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The giant panda lives in a few mountain ranges in central China, mainly in Sichuan, but also in neighbouring Shaanxi and Gansu. As a result of farming, deforestation, and other development, the giant panda has been driven out of the lowland areas where it once lived. A 2007 report showed 239 pandas living in captivity inside China and another 27 outside the country. As of December 2014, 49 giant pandas lived in captivity outside China, living in 18 zoos in 13 different countries. Wild population estimates vary; one estimate shows that there are about 1,590 individuals living in the wild,while a 2006 study via DNA analysis estimated that this figure could be as high as 2,000 to 3,000.Some reports also show that the number of giant pandas in the wild is on the rise. In March 2015, Mongabay stated that the wild giant panda population had increased by 268, or 16.8%, to 1,864. In 2016, the IUCN reclassified the species from "endangered" to "vulnerable".

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The giant panda is a vulnerable species, threatened by continued habitat loss and habitat fragmentation, and by a very low birthrate, both in the wild and in captivity. The giant panda has been a target of poaching by locals since ancient times and by foreigners since it was introduced to the West. Starting in the 1930's, foreigners were unable to poach giant pandas in China because of the Second Sino-Japanese war and the Chinese Civil War, but pandas remained a source of soft furs for the locals.
The Wolong National Nature Reserve was set up by the PRC government in  1958 to save the panda population.  Many people believed the best way to save the pandas was to cage them and as a result,  pandas were caged at any sign of decline, and suffered from terrible conditions.  Pollution and destruction of their natural habitat and segregation caused reproduction of pandas to be severely limited in the wild. In the 1990's several laws helped them to survive and with these efforts and improved conservation wild pandas started to go up in numbers. In 2006 there were 40 panda reserves in China where as in 1998 there was only 13.