Giant Panda Bear

The giant panda is a species of bear that is found in the mountains of central and western China. One of the most popular and distinguishable animals in the world, the giant panda is also one of the rarest. Habitat loss threatens this gentle creature, although the Chinese government has done much to improve its outlook. The giant panda is unique among bears as they do not hibernate, they have very small babies at birth, and they survive on a diet that is almost entirely vegetarian.

Since the giant panda was first discovered by a French naturalist in 1869, it has become a global symbol for conservation with the World Wildlife Fund using it as its logo. The Chinese people also see the giant panda as a symbol of peace, and numerous efforts have been made to try to protect the remaining population in its native habitat.

Anatomy and Appearance

The giant panda is a medium- to large-sized bear that has a large head, short tail, and a long muzzle with a large nose, which gives them an excellent sense of smell. The thick fur of the giant panda is creamy-white in color with large patches of black on the limbs, shoulders, ears, and nose, and distinctive black patches around their small eyes. The giant panda primarily eats bamboo and so has a number of physical adaptations to help with its consumption including an extension of their wrist bone, which acts a bit like a thumb, allowing the giant panda to grip onto bamboo stems. They also have large jaws with strong jaw muscles that — along with their flat molars — allow the giant panda to crush bamboo stems and leaves in order to extract nutrients.

Classification and Evolution

For many decades, there was a dispute over the giant panda’s lineage because it shares traits of both bears and raccoons. However, the giant panda has been proven to be a bear – a member of the family Ursidae. Referred to as living fossils, giant pandas are unique among all other bear species, having evolved without breeding with other types of bears.

Distribution and Habitat

Historically, the giant panda would have been found throughout the lowlands of the Yangtze River Basin but increased human activity in these areas has pushed the giant pandas high up into the mountains. Remote populations are still found in six different mountain ranges in central and western China, where they inhabit broadleaf and coniferous forests with a thick bamboo under-story at elevations between 5,000 and 13,000 feet. These high-altitude forests are cool, cloudy, and moist and are generally subjected to a high level of rainfall. It is thought that the unique coloration of the giant panda may help them to blend into these misty forests when they are foraging for food. It is, however, the loss of these habitats to deforestation that is the biggest threat to the giant panda today as they rely almost solely on bamboo to survive.

Behavior and Lifestyle

The giant panda is a solitary animal that marks its territory with secretions from scent glands and scratch marks on trees. Male giant pandas roam home ranges more than double the size of a female’s, with their territory overlapping those of several female giant pandas with which he holds breeding rights. As bamboo is not particularly nutritious, the giant panda must eat lots of bamboo every day and can consume up to 65 pounds of bamboo leaves, shoots, and stems, which is roughly 40% of its body weight. Giant pandas, therefore, dedicate between 12 and 15 hours a day to munching bamboo, which they do by sitting down and using their front paws to grip the plants. Even though the bear appears to spend its whole day either eating or sleeping, they are also known to be good at climbing trees and can even swim well when needed.

Reproduction and Life Cycles

Giant pandas breed between March and May when the female indicates her desire to mate by making a series of groans and bleats to attract a male. After a gestation period lasting around five months, the female giant panda gives birth to one or two cubs in the base of a hollow tree or cave. Panda bear cubs are very underdeveloped at birth, measuring as little as 5 inches and weighing only 3.5 ounces, they are made even more vulnerable by the fact that they are also blind and hairless at birth and don’t crawl until they are nearly three months old.

Female pandas care for one cub at a time even if they have twins. Cubs ride on their mother’s back until they can walk as fast as her, which is typically at around six months. Panda bear cubs are weaned when they are around a year old but don’t leave their mother until they are 18 months old. Some cubs may stay with their mother for a few years until she becomes pregnant again and they leave to establish a territory of their own.

Diet and Prey

Although taxonomically classified within the order Carnivora, giant pandas are functionally omnivores, with a diet consisting almost exclusively of bamboo. Known to consume more than 30 different species of the bamboo plant, giant pandas feed on different parts of the plant at different times of the year in order to get the most out of it. They use their strong jaws to crush the various plant parts into a more easily digestible paste. Spending more than half of their day eating, giant pandas also supplement their diet with other plants including grasses and fruits, as well as rodents and birds on occasion. Even though they can eat nearly half of their body weight in bamboo parts in just one day, the giant panda still needs to drink water and does so from mountain streams that are fed by melting ice and snow higher up the slopes.

Predators and Threats

Due to the large size and unique habitat of the giant panda, adults have no natural predators within their cool, bamboo-filled world. Cubs however are completely helpless until they are at least a year old. They are preyed upon by larger predators such as leopards and birds of prey. Humans however are the biggest threat to giant pandas in the Chinese mountains as they have hunted these remarkable animals for their unique fur, almost to extinction in some areas. Although harsh punishments for poaching have now slowed hunting down, giant pandas are under extreme threat from habitat loss in the form of deforestation for timber and land clearance for agriculture. They have therefore been forced into small, isolated pockets of their once vast natural range, and have been subjected to severe declines in their population numbers.

Interesting Facts and Features

• The giant panda has always fascinated people and therefore goes by a number of different names. Its scientific name means “cat-foot black and white,” and its Chinese name translates literally to “giant bear cat”, as the giant panda has slits for pupils in their eyes much like a cat.
• They are also known as bamboo bears by locals due to the enormous amount of bamboo that they consume.
• Giant panda cubs are so small at birth that they weigh about the same as an average mouse and at 3.5 ounces are roughly 0.001% of their mother’s weight.
• Giant pandas communicate with one another using a series of calls, with 11 different giant panda noises having been identified.

Conservation Status and Life Today

For decades the giant panda was listed by the IUCN as an animal species that was endangered in the wild. It was strongly believed that the giant panda was facing extinction in the wild in the near future if more was not done to protect it. The Chinese government has created 33 giant panda reserves, and more than 50% of its natural habitat is now protected by law. Extensive research has also gone into preventing the giant panda from becoming extinct, but it simply cannot survive without its unique bamboo forests. However, after 10 years of increasing population numbers to around 2,000 adult individuals, the giant panda has now been removed from the endangered species list and is instead classed as vulnerable by the IUCN mainly thanks to efforts by the Chinese government to not only protect their natural habitats but also by successful reproduction programs.

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