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A. m. qinlingensis. Giant panda range. The giant panda ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca ), also known as the panda bear or simply panda, is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes used to distinguish it from the red panda, a neighboring musteloid.
- Qinling Panda
The Qinling panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca qinlingensis),...
- Panda (Disambiguation)
Animals and plants. Ailuridae (familia), the family of the...
- Red Panda
f. styani Thomas, 1902 [2] Range of the red panda. The red...
- List of Giant Pandas
This is a partial list of giant pandas, both alive and...
- Pygmy Giant Panda
Ailuropoda microta is the earliest known ancestor of the...
- Tainan Fake Panda Incident
The Tainan fake panda incident refers to an incident at a...
- Mo (Chinese Zoology)
Zoology Giant panda illustration, Wilhelm Kuhnert 1927...
- National Symbol
Anationalism; Anti-nationalism; Anti-globalization movement;...
- File
You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit...
- List of Endangered and Protected Species of China
This article needs to be updated.The reason given is: List...
- Qinling Panda
- Overview
- Natural history
- Conservation and classification
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.
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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.
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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.
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Giant pandas are approximately the size of an American black bear, standing at about 3 feet (91 cm) tall at the shoulder when on all four legs. They measure around 7 feet (210 cm) in length. In the wild, males can weigh up to 251 pounds (114 kg), while females typically weigh less, generally staying below 220 pounds (100 kg).
The panda is not special just because it is one of the most well known and charismatic animals on earth. It is also a very peculiar species, with many unique and remarkable characteristics. Learn more: How many pandas live in the wild? Habitat: where do they live? Natural enemies and defences. What do they eat? How big, tall, and heavy are they?
The word panda is derived from the Nepalese word ponya, which means bamboo and plant-eating animals in Nepal. The giant panda is an endangered animal; an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 pandas live in the wild (BBC 2006a), with 50 in captivity outside China and at least 350 reported to live in captivity in mainland China (McShea 2015).
Weight. 220–330 pounds. Habitats. Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of southwest China. Map data provided by IUCN. The panda, with its distinctive black and white coat, is adored by the world and considered a national treasure in China. This bear also has a special significance for WWF because it has been our logo since our founding in 1961.
