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Pandas Climbing Trees | Funny Panda Clips

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also called:

panda bear

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giant panda, ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca), bear with striking black-and-white coloration inhabiting bamboo forests in the mountains of central China. Its coloration, combined with a bulky body and round face, gives it a captivating appearance that has endeared it to people worldwide. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, fewer than 1,900 pandas are thought to remain in the wild.

Large males may attain 1.8 metres (6 feet) in length and weigh more than 100 kg (220 pounds); females are usually smaller. Round black ears and black eye patches stand out against a white face and neck. Black limbs, tail, legs, and shoulders contrast with the white torso. The rear paws point inward, which gives pandas a waddling gait. Pandas can easily stand on their hind legs and are commonly observed somersaulting, rolling, and dust-bathing. Although somewhat awkward as climbers, pandas readily ascend trees and, on the basis of their resemblance to bears, are probably capable of swimming. An unusual anatomic characteristic is an enlarged wrist bone that functions somewhat like a thumb, enabling pandas to handle food with considerable dexterity.

Natural history

As much as 90-98 percent of the panda's diet consists of the leaves, shoots, and stems of bamboo, a large grass available year-round in much of China's forested regions. Despite adaptations in the forepaws, teeth, and jaws for bamboo consumption, the giant panda has retained the digestive system of its carnivore ancestry and is therefore unable to digest cellulose, a main constituent of bamboo. Pandas solve this problem by rapidly passing prodigious quantities of the grass through their digestive tracts on a daily basis. As much as 16 out of every 24 hours is spent feeding, and elimination of wastes occurs up to 50 times per day. Fossilized dental remains indicate that the giant panda committed to bamboo as its principal food source at least three million years ago. Although unable to capture prey, pandas retain a taste for meat, which is used as bait to capture them for radio collaring and has made them pests in human camps on occasion. The species cannot naturally survive outside bamboo forests, though in captivity they have been maintained on cereals, milk, and garden fruits and vegetables. Bamboo is the healthier diet for captive pandas.

The giant panda's solitary nature is underscored by its reliance on its sense of smell (olfaction). Each animal confines its activities to a range of about 4 to 6 square km (1.5 to 2.3 square miles), but these home ranges often overlap substantially. Under this arrangement scent functions in regulating contact between individuals. A large scent gland located just below the tail and surrounding the anus is used to leave olfactory messages for other pandas. The gland is rubbed against trees, rocks, and clumps of grass, with scent conveying information on identity, sex, and possibly social status of the marking individual. Chemical analysis of marks is consistent with a difference in function for males and females. Males appear to use scent to identify the areas where they live, whereas females primarily use it for signaling estrus. Except for the mothers' care of infants, the only social activity of pandas takes place during females' estrus, which occurs annually during the spring and lasts one to three days. A spring mating season (March-May) and a fall birth season (August-September) are seen in both wild and captive populations. Males appear to locate females first by scent and ultimately by vocalizations. Assemblages of one to five males per female have been recorded. At this time males may become highly aggressive as they compete for the opportunity to mate.

Like bears, giant pandas undergo a delay in implantation of the fertilized ovum into the wall of the uterus, a period of two to three months after mating. Hormone levels in females' urine indicate that the period of embryonic/fetal growth and development lasts only about two months. Altogether, gestation averages 135 days (with a range of 90-184 days), but, because of the short growth phase, a term fetus weighs only about 112 grams (4 ounces) on average. Relative to the mother, giant pandas produce the smallest offspring of any placental mammal (about 1/800 of the mother's weight). For the first two to three weeks of life, the mother uses her forepaws and her thumblike wrist bones to cuddle and position the infant against herself in a rather uncarnivore-like and almost human fashion. Nearly half of the 133 captive births recorded before 1998 were of twins, but panda mothers are typically unable to care for more than one infant. Reasons for the extremely small size of the offspring and the frequent production of twins are not understood, but both are traits shared with bears.

The newborn panda is blind and covered with only a thin all-white coat. It is virtually helpless, being able only to suckle and vocalize. It depends on its mother for warmth, nourishment, positioning at the breast, and stimulating the passage of wastes. Development is slow during the early months. Eyes begin to open at about 45 days, and the first wobbly steps are taken at 75-80 days. Its helpless state mandates birth in a den, an environment in which it lives for the first 100-120 days of life. By about 14 months, at which age the milk teeth have erupted, the infant readily consumes bamboo, and at 18-24 months weaning from the mother takes place. Separation from the mother must occur before a female can undertake the production of her next litter. Captive pandas may live beyond 30 years in captivity, but life span in the wild is estimated at about 20 years.

Conservation and classification

Fossils from northern Myanmar and Vietnam and much of China as far north as Beijing indicate that the giant panda was widely distributed throughout eastern Asia during the early Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Human destruction of its forest habitat, combined with poaching, has restricted the species to remote fragments of mountain habitat along the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan (Szechwan), Shaanxi (Shensi), and Gansu (Kansu). The total area of these habitats is about 13,000 square km (5,000 square miles), and in recent times periodic mass flowering and die-offs of bamboo have brought starvation for some populations. (Five to 10 years are required for bamboo forests to recover from these natural events.) Since the 1990s China has greatly expanded its conservation efforts, and it now regards the panda as a national treasure. The reserve system has been expanded from 14 sites to more than 40, and cooperative international arrangements were implemented to provide training in reserve management and captive breeding. The panda had long been considered an endangered species by the IUCN, but the environmental organization changed the status of the panda to " vulnerable " in 2016, because of China's success in restoring bamboo forest habitat.

Prior eras of giving pandas as gifts and of short-term commercial loans to zoos have given way to lending agreements that generate funds for preservation of the wild population. More than 120 pandas are maintained in captivity in China, and another 15 to 20 are found in zoos elsewhere. Captive populations are increasing. Su-Lin, the first of the giant pandas to be exhibited in the West, reached the United States as an infant in 1936 and was a popular attraction at the Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, until its death in 1938. No European observed a live giant panda in the wild until the Walter Stötzner expedition of 1913-15, although Armand David, a Vincentian missionary, discovered some panda furs in 1869.

The classification of giant pandas has long been a subject of controversy. Anatomic, behavioral, and biochemical data have been used to place pandas with bears (family Ursidae), with raccoon s (Procyonidae), or in a family of their own (Ailuridae). Improved molecular analyses made during the 1990s strongly suggest bears as the giant panda's closest relatives, and many of their behavioral and reproductive characteristics are consistent with this placement.
Donald G. Lindburg

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Giant panda | Facts, Habitat, Population, & Diet

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Giant panda, bear with striking black-and-white coloration inhabiting bamboo forests in the mountains of central China. Its coloration, bulky body, and round face gives it a captivating appearance that has endeared it to people worldwide. Learn more about the giant panda in this article.

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1. It is believed that pandas roamed the earth as early as three million years ago.

2. There are two main types of pandas - the giant black-and-white panda and the Red Panda.

3. Female pandas only ovulate once each year. During that ovulation period, they are only fertile for two or three days. That is one of the reasons why the population has dwindled.

4. Zoologists debate about whether pandas are bears or raccoons. They share some of the characteristics of bears, but they also have some raccoon traits. Some even believe that pandas might be their very own species.

5. Red Pandas resemble the raccoon family. They are typically reddish-brown in color and they grow to about two feet and only weigh up to 12 pounds. They are mostly found in China, Burma, and India.

6. Most newborn pandas die from diseases or because the mother panda accidentally crushes them.

7. Female pandas are not considered to be adults until they are at least five years old. For males, the age is seven years old.

8. An adult Giant Panda can grow as tall as five feet and they can weigh as much as 350 pounds. They can also consume 45 pounds of bamboo shoots in one day.

9. Pandas have been known to live as long as 35 years when living in captivity at a zoo. In the wild, they typically live about 20 years.

10. A normal adult giant panda can produce more than 60 pounds of droppings in a 24-hour period.

11. The jaw and cheek muscles on a giant panda are so powerful that they can chew up an aluminum can into small pieces. They can also bite through bamboo stalks that are so thick that humans have a hard time cutting them with an axe.

12. A panda's diet consists mostly of bamboo shoots. In fact, that's about 99% of what they eat. They also tend to eat other grasses as well as small rodents. The pandas that live in the zoos are generally fed a diet of bamboo, carrots, apples, sugar cane, high fiber biscuits and sweet potatoes.

13. Giant Pandas do not hibernate during the winter months. Because they have such lean diets, they do not gain the added fat that is needed in order to hibernate.

14. The giant panda is currently on the endangered species list of the World Conservation Union. It is believed that there are about 1600 pandas currently living in the wild and only about 300 living in breeding centers and zoos across the world.

15. The most significant threat to the survival of the panda species is poaching and losing their habitats.

16. Scientists and zoologists hope to have the panda population up to about 5,000 by the year 2025.

17. The fur from a panda generally sells for between $60,000 and $100,000on the black market.

18. The skin of a panda matches their fur. That means that where their fur is black, the skin underneath is also black. The area where the fur is white, the skin underneath is also white.

19. There is a legend about how pandas got their black and white fur. The legend states that pandas used to be all white. One day, however, a young girl tried to save a small panda from an attacking leopard, and the leopard ended up killing the girl. The story says that the all-white pandas came to her funeral wearing armbands made of black ashes. As the pandas hugged and comforted each other, the black ash smeared and created black-and-white pandas.

20. In ancient Asia, it was believed that pandas could ward off evil spirits and keep away natural disasters.

21. In China, pandas are considered a symbol of peace. When tribes were fighting against each other hundreds of years ago, they would hold up a flag with a picture of a panda on it if they wanted to call a truce or stop the fighting.

22. In the wild, pandas typically prefer to be alone. Giant pandas cannot compete with each other for food and resources because it takes too much energy.

23. The first giant panda to leave China was named Su-Lin. This occurred in 1936 and he arrived in Chicago at the Brookfield Zoo. Before this, pandas were relatively unknown to most of the world outside of China.

24. Pandas cost five times as much as an elephant to keep in a zoo. That makes them the most expensive animal to keep in captivity.

25. As a gesture of friendship for opening relations with China, the Chinese government gave the United States two pandas for the Washington Zoo in 1972. The names of the two pandas were Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. Ling-Ling died in 1992 of heart failure and Hsing-Hsing was put to sleep in 1999 due to kidney failure.

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1. It is believed that pandas roamed the earth as early as three million years ago. 2. There are two main types of pandas - the giant black-and-white

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What do Pandas Eat - In the Wild and In Captivity - Pandas Diet

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What do PANDAS eat? 🐼 All about the Panda Bear Diet!

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The giant panda is one of the world's most iconic animals and is a symbol of the fragility of nature - as well as a beacon of hope for the future if we take action to protect our planet and the animals we share it with.

They are also among the cutest creatures alive, and their peaceful, playful demeanor is incredibly endearing, as is their penchant for endlessly chomping on bamboo.

Their legendary love for this food is the result of an intriguing evolutionary tale, so to tell the story, here we answer the question, why do pandas eat bamboo?

If you want a preview of some of the stuff we're going to be talking about - or if you just want to see some cute pandas doing cute panda stuff - you can check out this video too before reading on.

What exactly do pandas eat?

Everyone knows that pandas adore bamboo, but perhaps not everyone realizes quite how much.

In fact, a panda's diet consists almost exclusively of this single plant, with bamboo making up 99% of the food they eat.

In the wild, pandas spend around 12-14 hours every day crunching bamboo, getting through around 10-15kg (22-33lbs) of it daily.

In captivity, even when other food is available, they still choose to consume huge quantities of their favorite plant, with bamboo making up around 75% of their diet.

But in the wild, what makes up the other 1%?

When they can, pandas will occasionally catch and consume small rodents like pikas as well as birds, fish, eggs or whatever else they come across. But still, bamboo is unquestionably their favorite snack, and something they seemingly never get bored of munching.

The paradox of a panda's diet

Despite pandas' passion for bamboo, when you look more closely at their physiology, it becomes apparent that this devotion to bamboo represents something of a paradox - because, in many ways, pandas are not well suited to surviving on a vegetarian diet.

Pandas belong to the Carnivora clade, and as the name suggests, most of the other animals in this group are carnivores or at least omnivores. Pandas are a rare member of this clade that lives almost exclusively on a vegetarian diet, which makes them an evolutionary anomaly.

Pandas do display some adaptations for eating bamboo, but at the same time, like most of their closest relatives, much of their physiology appears to be set up for eating meat.

For example, pandas have molars that are good for chewing bamboo. They also have a relatively large head compared to similar animals, which gives them stronger muscles in the jaw to help them masticate their favorite food.

Another interesting feature of pandas is that one of the bones in their wrists has become elongated into a kind of "pseudo-thumb", which is a useful adaptation that helps them grasp their favorite food while they chew on it.

However, pandas have short small intestines and simple stomachs that are poorly suited to digesting plant matter - they don't have multi-chambered stomachs like cows, for example.

They also don't possess the gut flora or enzymes that are required to obtain the maximum nutrition from plant matter, something that makes bamboo something of an inappropriate food for them to eat.

Bamboo isn't a rich source of nutrients in the first place, but to compound this, the digestive system of a panda isn't as efficient as those of other herbivores at absorbing cellulose, so it would seem to make little sense for pandas to eat bamboo.

So strange is the mismatch between what they are evolved to eat and what they live on that some scientists decided to investigate further, and the results were surprising.

Nutrients to feed a carnivore

To work out what was going on, researchers tagged some pandas and followed them around to see where they were traveling, what they were eating - and also what came out of the other end in large quantities.

One of the most significant findings came from analyzing the pandas' poop.

By comparing the ratios of protein and fat in the droppings with the ratios found in bamboo, the scientists were able to work out that the animals were extracting a high proportion of protein from the bamboo.

This told them that almost half of the pandas' calorie intake, around 48%, came from protein, while the other 52% came from fat and carbs.

The results were striking because, nutritionally speaking, this is much closer to what you would expect from carnivores rather than plant-eating animals.

Specifically, "hypercarnivores" like wild wolves and feral cats that get 70% or more of their food from eating other animals obtain around 50% of their energy requirements from protein. Herbivores, on the other hand, get only around 20% of their energy from protein.

This means that while pandas live almost exclusively on vegetation, nutritionally, their diet resembles that of a true carnivore - so in a way, bamboo has become a kind of " fake meat " for pandas.

Why did they switch?

This all begs the question, why did pandas switch to eating bamboo when their bodies are more suited to a carnivorous or omnivorous diet?

The answer probably has to do with the abundance of bamboo in the areas where they live.

It is thought that pandas have been bamboo-eaters for around 2-2.4 million years.

We know that genetically, they lost the ability to taste umami at about the same time they switched to a plant-based diet.

The gene that allows animals (including humans) to taste umami flavors is associated with meat-eating, and in pandas, it became deactivated around when they started eating bamboo.

Whether the gene became inactive due to the pandas switching or whether the gene becoming inactive drove the change is still being debated - but what's certain is that the time when the switch occurred was a time of great extinctions on Earth.

One theory posits that by switching to an abundant food source that few other animals chose to eat, pandas were able to guarantee themselves limitless meals that were always available and that they didn't need to fight for.

And once the change occurred, there was no going back.

A panda's life - a continuous search for protein-rich bamboo

The scientists studying the pandas' diet and behavior also revealed other secrets about their behavior, and unsurprisingly, pandas' lives are driven by the constant quest to find more food.

The pandas in the study were part of a population of animals living in the Qinling mountains in China's Sichuan province.

It was found that during the months from April to August, the pandas remained at lower elevations, feeding on a species of bamboo known as Baschania fargesii.

At the start of this phase, they made do with the leaves, but once the shoots began to appear, they switched to voraciously devouring those instead. The shoots contain a higher protein content, so this fits with what you'd expect from the result of the poo analysis.

As the shoots grow, however, the protein content becomes diminished as the proportion of fiber increases, so when this food source became less appealing, the pandas would move up the mountains in search of a different bamboo species, Fargesia qinlingensis.

They would then proceed to consume these shoots, after which, they did their best to subsist on the leaves during the winter until they could come down from the mountain the following April to begin the cycle again.

Their behavior clearly shows the pandas following the growth of different species of bamboo and deliberately seeking out the parts of the plant that gave them the highest yield of protein.

This is further evidence of pandas obtaining their energy from a diet that is nutritionally much closer to that of a carnivore, even though in practice, they eat almost nothing but plants.

Are there any downsides to living on bamboo?

Making the change to a bamboo diet didn't leave our furry friends in some kind of perfect panda utopia since living almost exclusively on this one food source also has plenty of drawbacks.

As we've said, bamboo is rather short on nutrients, so to obtain all the protein they need from it, they have to eat a whole lot of the stuff - which is why pandas spend practically their whole waking lives munching it down.

Although they receive the same proportion of their calories from protein as true carnivores, it's far more efficient to get that protein by eating a prey animal than it is to receive it from bamboo, so to obtain the required amounts, they have to consume prodigious amounts.

Since they struggle to obtain all the nutrients they require, even when they spend most of the day gorging on their favorite food, female pandas also have few spare nutrients available for bearing young.

As a result, panda babies are born after one of the shortest gestation periods of any bear. Most of their cousins give birth after a pregnancy of around six months, but pandas give birth after only around two or three.

This means that, at around 90-130g (3.5-4.5oz), panda babies are tiny and weigh around a third as much as other bear cubs, which usually come in at around 300-400g (10.5-14oz) at birth. Panda newborns are helpless and are completely reliant on their mothers.

A darker and more macabre consequence of this is that mother pandas know they don't have the nutrients to feed two babies, so if twins are born, she will only keep the stronger one, abandoning the weaker one to die.

Hibernation and starvation

Another effect of living almost entirely on bamboo is that, unlike other bears, pandas can't build up the fat reserves required for hibernation and instead must keep feeding throughout the winter, surviving in any way they can.

Winter is a hard time for pandas because bamboo becomes more scarce and even less nutritious.

The result is that most panda deaths occur at the end of winter, the hardest time of year for the animals.

For example, one team of researchers recorded that of 25 cases of panda deaths or illnesses over a 37-year period, more than half of them occurred during March and April. So as you can see, life is not all fun and games for the gentle bamboo eaters by any means.

Loss of habitat

There's also one other major downside of living almost exclusively on a bamboo diet, and it's one that almost drove pandas to extinction.

Since pandas live on such a restrictive diet, they depend on that food being readily available, so when their habitat is destroyed by humans, they find it impossible to adapt and simply die off.

And this is exactly what happened in the past.

Nowadays, almost everyone knows that pandas are native to China, and most people probably also know that their current range is mostly located in Sichuan province where their favorite bamboo is still abundant.

However, in the past, their range was more extensive, and they could be found roaming in parts of Myanmar, through southern China and as far as Vietnam.

Unfortunately, due to habitat loss - as well as hunting for their furs - their numbers plummeted to the point where they were on the brink of being lost forever.

Although conservation efforts have allowed their numbers to rebound somewhat in recent years, it is thought that at one point the number of giant pandas in the wild fell well below around only 1000 animals.

Thankfully, numbers are rising again now, and as long as people do what they can to preserve the pandas and the bamboo forests they inhabit, it looks like the panda has been brought back from the brink.

Inspiration for human vegans or an "evolutionary mistake"?

Some people think the panda's switch to a plant-based diet despite its meat-eating physiology can serve as an inspiration for humans hoping to go vegan - while others consider them an "evolutionary mistake" that was well on the way to extinction before humans got involved.

In any case, pandas are among the most adorable and well-loved animals we have, and through conservation efforts, it looks like they're here to stay. So happily, we can all look forward to watching pandas chomping away on their favorite food for many years to come.

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Why Do Pandas Eat Bamboo If They are Carnivores

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The giant panda is one of the world's most iconic animals and is a symbol of the fragility of nature - as well as a beacon of hope for the future if we take action to protect our planet and the animals we share it with.