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"Panda" and "Panda Bear" redirect here. For other uses, see Panda (disambiguation) and Panda Bear (disambiguation).
For the Red Panda, see Red Panda.
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The Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, "black-and-white cat-foot"; traditional Chinese: 大熊貓; simplified Chinese: 大熊猫; pinyin: Dàxióngmāo; literally: "big bear cat") is a mammal classified in the bear family, Ursidae, native to central-western and southwestern China.Global Species Programme – Giant panda The panda was previously thought to be a member of the Procyonidae.Bram, Leon (1986). Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia Vol 20, Hardcover, Funk & Wagnalls Inc, p. 119. ISBN 0-8343-0072-9. It is easily recognized by its large, distinctive black patches around the eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. Though belonging to the order Carnivora, the panda has a diet which is 99% bamboo. Pandas may eat other foods such as honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges and bananas.
Giant pandas live in a few mountain ranges in central China, in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces. They once lived in lowland areas, but farming, forest clearing, and other development now restrict giant pandas to the mountains.
The Giant Panda is an endangered species. According to the latest report,Number of pandas successfully bred in China down from last year China has 239 giant pandas in captivity (128 of them in Wolong and 67 in Chengdu) and another 27 pandas living outside the country. It also estimated that around 1,590 pandas are living in the wild. However, a 2006 study via DNA analysis estimated that there might be as many as 2,000-3,000 pandas in the wild."Hope for future of giant panda", BBC News, 20-06-2006. Retrieved on 14-02-2007. Though reports show that the numbers of wild pandas are on the rise,Giant panda gives birth to giant cubNational Geographic the World Conservation Union (IUCN) believes there is not enough certainty to remove pandas from the endangered animal list.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7087345.stm BBC News 2007-11(Nov)-12. Retrieved on 2007-11(Nov)-12.
While the dragon has historically served as China\'s national emblem, in recent decades the Giant Panda has also served as emblem for the country. Its image appears on a large number of modern Chinese commemorative silver, gold, and platinum coins. The species is a favorite of the public, at least in part because many people find that it has a baby-like cuteness. Also, it is usually depicted reclining peacefully eating bamboo, as opposed to hunting, which adds to its image of innocence. Though giant pandas are often assumed docile, they have been known to attack humans, presumably out of irritation rather than predatory behavior. Research shows that in cases in which its offspring may be under threat, the panda may react violently.[citation needed]
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a Giant Panda cub, weight approximately 150g.
The Giant Panda has a black-and-white coat. Adults measure around 1.5 m long and around 75 cm tall at the shoulder. Males are 10-20% larger than females.Brown, Gary (1996). Great Bear Almanac, pp.340. ISBN 1558214747. Males can weigh up to 115 kg (253 pounds). Females are generally smaller than males, and can occasionally weigh up to 100 kg (220 pounds). Giant Pandas live in mountainous regions, such as Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Tibet.
The giant panda, a black-and-white bear, has a body typical of bears. It has black fur on ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs, and shoulders. The rest of the animal\'s coat is white. Although scientists do not know why these unusual bears are black and white, some speculate that the bold coloring provides effective camouflage into their shade-dappled snowy and rocky surroundings. The panda\'s thick, wooly coat keeps it warm in the cool forests of its habitat. Giant pandas have large molar teeth and strong jaw muscles for crushing tough bamboo. Many people find these chunky, lumbering animals to be cute, but giant pandas can be as dangerous as any other bear.
The Giant Panda has a paw, with a "thumb" and five fingers; the "thumb" is actually a modified sesamoid bone, which helps the panda to hold bamboo while eating. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay about this, then used the title The Panda\'s Thumb for a book of essays concerned with evolution, punctuated equilibrium, intelligent design, the Piltdown Man hoax, Down syndrome, and the relationship between dinosaurs and birds among others.
After the sloth bear, it has the longest tail in the bear family; it being 4-6 inches long.Brown, Gary (1996). Great Bear Almanac, pp.340. ISBN 1558214747.
Giant Pandas can usually live to be 20-30 years old in captivity.
Until recently, scientists thought giant pandas spent most of their lives alone, with males and females meeting only during the breeding season. Recent studies paint a different picture, in which small groups of pandas share a large territory and sometimes meet outside the breeding season.[citation needed]
Like most subtropical mammals, but unlike most bears, the giant panda does not hibernate.
Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivore, the panda has a diet that is primarily herbivorous, which consists almost exclusively of bamboo. However, pandas still have the digestive system of a carnivore and do not have the ability to digest cellulose efficiently, and thus derive little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. The average Giant Panda eats as much as 9 to 14 kg (20 to 30 pounds) of bamboo shoots a day. Because pandas consume a diet low in nutrition, it is important that they keep their digestive tract full.
Panda eating bamboo
The panda has pushed its habitat to a higher altitude and limited available space.[citation needed] The timber profit gained from harvesting bamboo has destroyed a significant portion of the food supply for the wild panda. The population of wild pandas decreased by 50 percent from 1973 to 1984 in six areas of China.
Twenty-five species of bamboo are eaten by pandas in the wild, such as Fargesia dracocephalaLi, De-Zhu; Guo, Zhenhua; Stapleton, Chris (2007), "Fargesia dracocephala", in Wu, Z. Y.; Raven, P.H.; Hong, D.Y., Flora of China, vol. 22, Beijing: Science Press; St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, pp. 93 and Fargesia rufa.Li, De-Zhu; Guo, Zhenhua; Stapleton, Chris (2007), "Fargesia rufa", in Wu, Z. Y.; Raven, P.H.; Hong, D.Y., Flora of China, vol. 22, Beijing: Science Press; St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, pp. 81 Only a few bamboo species are widespread at the high altitudes pandas now inhabit. Bamboo leaves contain the highest protein levels; stems have less.
Because of the synchronous flowering, death, and regeneration of all bamboo within a species, pandas must have at least two different species available in their range to avoid starvation. The panda\'s round face is an adaptation to its bamboo diet.[citation needed] Their powerful jaw muscles attach from the top of the head to the jaw. Large molars crush and grind fibrous plant material. While primarily herbivorous, the panda still retains decidedly ursine teeth, and will eat meat, fish, and eggs when available. In captivity, zoos typically maintain the pandas\' bamboo diet, though some will provide specially formulated biscuits or other dietary supplements.
For many decades the precise taxonomic classification of the panda was under debate as both the giant panda and the distantly related red panda share characteristics of both bears and raccoons. However, genetic testing suggests that giant pandas are true bears and part of the Ursidae family,[citation needed] though they differentiated early in history from the main ursine stock. The giant panda\'s closest ursine relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America. Disagreement still remains about whether or not the red panda belongs in Ursidae, the raccoon family Procyonidae, or in its own family, Ailuridae. The giant panda has been referred to as a living fossil.Behind the News - Panda Granny (12/06/2007)
The red panda and the giant panda, although completely different in appearance, share several features. They both live in the same habitat, they both live on a similar bamboo diet and they both share a unique enlarged bone called the pseudo thumb, which allows them to grip the bamboo shoots they eat.
Hua Mei, the baby panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 1999
Two subspecies of giant panda have been recognized on the basis of distinct cranial measurements, color patterns, and population genetics (Wan et al., 2005).
Unlike many other animals in ancient China, pandas were rarely thought to have medical uses. In the past, pandas were thought to be rare and noble creatures; the mother of Emperor Wen of Han was buried with a panda skull in her vault. Emperor Taizong of Tang is said to have given Japan two pandas and a sheet of panda skin as a sign of goodwill.
The giant panda was first made known to the West in 1869 by the French missionary Armand David, who received a skin from a hunter on 11 March 1869. The first westerner known to have seen a living giant panda is the German zoologist Hugo Weigold, who purchased a cub in 1916. Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., became the first foreigners to shoot a panda, on an expedition funded by the Field Museum of Natural History in the 1920s. In 1936, Ruth Harkness became the first Westerner to bring back a live giant panda, a cub named Su-LinThe Panda Lady: Ruth Harkness (Part 1). Female explorers. Retrieved on 2007-02-01. who went to live at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. These activities were halted in 1937 because of wars; and for the next half of the century, the West knew little of pandas.
Gao Gao, an adult male giant panda at San Diego Zoo
Loans of giant pandas to American and Japanese zoos formed an important part of the diplomacy of the People\'s Republic of China in the 1970s as it marked some of the first cultural exchanges between the PRC and the West. This practice has been termed "Panda Diplomacy".
By the year 1984, however, pandas were no longer used as agents of diplomacy. Instead, China began to offer pandas to other nations only on 10-year loans. The standard loan terms include a fee of up to US$ 1,000,000 per year and a provision that any cubs born during the loan are the property of the People\'s Republic of China. Since 1998, due to a WWF lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only allows a U.S. zoo to import a panda if the zoo can ensure that China will channel more than half of its loan fee into conservation efforts for wild pandas and their habitat.
In May 2005, the People\'s Republic of China offered Taiwan (Republic of China) two pandas as a gift. This proposed gift was met by polarized opinions from Taiwan due to complications stemming from cross-strait relations. As of September, 2007, Taiwan has not accepted the offer. Trial marriages for Taiwan pandas. BBC News. October 13, 2005. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
Giant pandas are an endangered species, threatened by continued habitat loss and by a very low birthrate, both in the wild and in captivity.
Pandas have been a target for poaching by locals since ancient times, and by foreigners since they were introduced to the West. Starting in the 1930s, foreigners were unable to poach 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 population boom in China after 1949 created stress on the pandas\' habitat, and the subsequent famines led to the increased hunting of wildlife, including pandas. During the Cultural Revolution, all studies and conservation activities on the pandas were stopped. After the Chinese economic reform, demand for panda skins from Hong Kong and Japan led to illegal poaching for the black market, acts generally ignored by the local officials at the time.
Close up of a baby 7-month old panda cub in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan, China.
Though the Wolong National Nature Reserve was set up by the PRC government in 1958 to save the declining panda population, few advances in the conservation of pandas were made, due to inexperience and insufficient knowledge of ecology. Many believed that the best way to save the pandas was to cage them. As a result, pandas were caged at any sign of decline, and suffered from terrible conditions. Because of pollution and destruction of their natural habitat, along with segregation due to caging, reproduction of wild pandas was severely limited. In the 1990s, however, several laws (including gun controls and the removal of resident humans from the reserves) helped the chances of survival for pandas. With these renewed efforts and improved conservation methods, wild pandas have started to increase in numbers in some areas, even though they still are classified as a rare species.
In 2006, scientists reported that the number of pandas living in the wild may have been underestimated at about 1,000. Previous population surveys had used conventional methods to estimate the size of the wild panda population, but using a new method that analyzes DNA from panda droppings, scientists believe that the wild panda population may be as large as 3,000. Although the species is still endangered, it is thought that the conservation efforts are working. As of 2006, there were 40 panda reserves in China, compared to just 13 reserves two decades ago.
The giant panda is among the world\'s most adored and protected rare animals, and is one of the few in the world whose natural inhabitant status was able to gain a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. The Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, located in the southwest Sichuan province and covering 7 natural reserves, were inscribed onto the World Heritage List in 2006.Pandas gain world heritage status BBC NewsPanda sanctuaries now World Heritage sites United Press International
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Efforts of showing mating panda videos and giving pandas Viagra were tried to increase the interest of male pandas to mate according to Time Magazine.[citation needed] Studies have shown that wild pandas reproduce as well as North American brown bears when they do reproduce.Warren, Lynn (July, 2006). What\'s black and white and adored all over—and can cost a zoo more than three million dollars a year?. Retrieved on 2006-10-16. A female panda may have 2-3 cubs in a lifetime, on average.[citation needed] Growth is slow[clarify] and pandas may not reach sexual maturity until five to seven years of age. The mating season usually takes place from mid-March to mid-May. During this time, two to five males can compete for one female; the male with the highest rank gets the female. When mating, the female is in a crouching, head-down position as the male mounts from behind. Copulation time is short, ranging from thirty seconds to five minutes, but the male may mount repeatedly to ensure successful fertilization.
The whole gestation period ranges from 83 to 163 days, with 135 days being the average.[citation needed] Baby pandas weigh only 90 to 130 grams (3.2 to 4.6 ounces), which is about 1/900 of the mother’s weight. Usually, the female panda gives birth to one or two panda cubs. Since baby pandas are born very small and helpless, they need the mother’s undivided attention, so she is able to care for only one of her cubs. She usually abandons one of her cubs, and it dies soon after birth. At this time, scientists do not know how the female chooses which cub to raise, and this is a topic of ongoing research. The father has no part in helping raise the cub.
When the cub is first born, it is pink, furless, and blind. It nurses from its mother\'s breast 6 to 14 times a day for up to 30 minutes at a time. For three to four hours, the mother may leave the den to feed, which leaves the panda cub defenseless. One to two weeks after birth, the cub\'s skin turns gray where its hair will eventually become black. A slight pink color may appear on the panda\'s fur, as a result of a chemical reaction between the fur and its mother\'s saliva. A month after birth, the color pattern of the cub’s fur is fully developed. A cub\'s fur is very soft and coarsens with age. The cub begins to crawl at 75 to 90 days; mothers play with their cubs by rolling and wrestling with them. The cubs are able to eat small quantities of bamboo after six months, though mother\'s milk remains the primary food source for most of the first year. Giant panda cubs weigh 45 kg (99.2 pounds) at one year, and live with their mothers until they are 18 months to two years old. The interval between births in the wild is generally two years.
Breeders and biologists often experience difficulty in inducing captive pandas to mate, threatening their already diminished population.[citation needed] This problem may stem from the captive bears\' lack of experience.[citation needed] In an attempt to remedy this, some keepers in China and Thailand have shown their subjects videos containing footage of mating pandas.Panda porn to cure bedtime blues (June 27, 2002). Retrieved on 2007-04-30. In some cases, the bears have been sufficiently stimulated from the videos to engage in reproductive activity.[citation needed] It is not likely that the animals actually learn mating behaviors from the video; rather, scientists[attribution needed] believe that hearing the associated sounds has a stimulating effect on the bears exposed to it.
The name "panda" originates with a Himalayan language, possibly Nepali. As used in the West the name was originally applied to the red panda. Until its relation to the red panda was discovered in 1901, the giant panda was known as Mottled Bear (Ailuropus melanoleucus) or Particolored Bear.
The Chinese language name for the giant panda, 大熊貓, literally translates to "large bear cat," or just "bear cat" (熊貓). There are two explanations for the origin of this name.
Physiologically, the eyes of most other bear species have round pupils, but the giant pandas have pupils that are vertical slits like cats\' eyes. These unusual eyes, combined with its ability to effortlessly scale trees, maybe what inspired the Chinese to call the panda the "bear cat." However, this explanation seem unlikely as locals from different provinces use names such as "spotted bear" (花熊) and "bamboo bear" (竹熊) for giant panda, which shows that the farmers are more likely to use "bear" as the noun when they see an obviously bear-sized animal.
On the other hand, some researchers believe that the name "bear cat," originally belonged to the red panda, which also live on bamboo in China, and they are actually cat-size. When Himalayan first saw giant panda, they named it "large bear cat," due to the similaries in behaviors and habitat. This will also explain why Chinese zoological texts and dictionaries published in the early 20th centuries, before the series of civil wars, always used the word "large" in the name and never just "bear cat."
In Taiwan, the modern name for panda is "cat bear," (貓熊), where cat is grammatically the adjective and bear is the noun. Although many researchers have found this name to be likely derived by misunderstandings with writing formats, Traditionally, Chinese words were written in columns, from top to bottom, then right to left. See Written Chinese "cat bear" logically makes more sense and thus there are no effort to change the name to the original name of "large bear cat." Some even propose that "cat bear" should be the official Chinese name internationally.Discussion about the Chinese name for giant panda (in Chinese).
Panda in Moscow Zoo on 1964 Soviet Union 2 kopeks postal stamp
A 2006 New York Times article [1] outlined the economics of keeping pandas, which costs five times more than that of the next most expensive animal, an elephant. American zoos must pay the Chinese government $1 million a year in fees, as part of a typically ten-year contract. San Diego\'s contract with China is the first to expire, in 2008. The last contract, in Memphis, ends in 2013.
As of 2007, five major North American zoos have giant pandas:
Tai Shan in June 2007
.jpg/58px-Giant panda at Vienna Zoo (cropped).jpg)
Giant panda in Vienna’s zoo Tiergarten Schönbrunn
Three zoos in Europe show giant pandas:
London, Moscow and Paris no longer have pandas.
Pandas in Japan have double names: a Japanese name and a Chinese name. Three zoos in Japan show giant pandas:
The first sequences of pandas in the wild were shot by Franz Camenzind for ABC in about 1982. They were bought by BBC Natural History Unit for their weekly magazine show Nature.
Recently NHNZ has featured pandas in two documentaries. Panda Nursery (2006) featured China’s Wolong Nature Reserve in the mountains in Sichuan Province, forty giant pandas and a dedicated team of staff play a crucial role in ensuring the survival of the species. As part of the Reserve’s panda breeding programme, a revolutionary new method of rearing twin cubs called ‘swap-raising’ has been developed. Each cub is raised by both its natural mother and one of the Reserve’s veterinarians, Wei Rongping, to increase the chances of both cubs surviving. Growing Up: Giant Panda (2003) featured Chengdu Giant Panda Center in south-west China as one of the best in the world. But with female pandas\' short fertility cycles and low birth rates, raising the captive panda population is an uphill battle.
In Hong Kong, there is now a Panda Channel on Now Broadband TV for citizens in Hong Kong to watch the four giant pandas in Ocean Park Hong Kong directly through their broadband TV decoders. An Internet live is also available on the Panda Channel Website for people worldwide to watch the giant pandas through four cameras individually.
The panda Chow-Ling made an appearance in the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
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Wikispecies has information related to:
| Extant species of family Ursidae | |||
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| Kingdom: Animalia · Phylum: Chordata · Class: Mammalia · Order: Carnivora · Suborder: Caniformia | |||
| Ailuropodinae |
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| Tremarctinae |
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| Ursinae | |||
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