Giant pandas have been with us for a very, very long time. She will have around 5 litters in her lifetime. Mature females will breed once every two or three years in the wild. The reproductive cycle for pandas is a tad on the slow side. Breeding is seemingly not high on their list of priorities.ġ4. Pandas spend most of their time either eating, or sleeping. That figure jumps to 30 years for those living in captivity. The average life span of a panda is between 14 and 20 years. Pandas can live almost twice as long in captivity than in the wild. Giant pandas can climb from around 6-months old, and like all bears, can swim rather well when required. Giant pandas can climb trees and can swim. The Chinese government is improving nature reserves to help secure their survival.Ĭhina has a network of 67 panda reserves, which look after 66% of the giant pandas in the wild, and almost 54% of their existing habitat. A census taken in 2014 showed that figure had increased to 1,864 pandas living in the wild. In the 1970’s there were only about 1,000 pandas on the planet. Giant panda populations are not high, but they are increasing. If a cub is born, they cost $400k and are shipped back at 3 years old to help breed. Zoos typically sign a 10 year contract to ‘rent’ a giant panda. China rents giant pandas to American Zoos for $1m per year. The arrangement is a little more complicated than that as each time a cub is born, it has to be sent back to China in order to assist in expanding the giant panda gene pool. All giant pandas in the world are Chinese citizens.Īs the giant panda is a Chinese national treasure and protected by law, if you see one in a reserve or zoo somewhere else in the world that panda is actually on loan from China. The male range is on the upper end of that with females holding a slightly smaller territory. Panda home ranges cover roughly five square kilometers. The male panda has a larger range than that of the female. Scientists believe this increases their risk of extinction. Their digestive systems are still better suited to a carnivorous diet. While they may have evolved to eating bamboo, researchers found their gut has not adapted so well. Giant panda guts are not suited to bamboo. Pandas are thought to have evolved from eating animals and plants, to an almost exclusive bamboo diet about 2 million years ago. Giant pandas have teeth of a carnivore, but are herbivores. It helps pandas handle bamboo, as they peel and eat it. A giant panda can peel and eat a bamboo shoot in around 40 secs. This ‘thumb’ is actually a enlarged and modified wrist bone, which is also present (in ‘original form) in racoon, red panda, and black bear. Giant pandas have evolved a unique opposable ‘thumb’, which they use to hold bamboo stalks. Females, on the other hand, weigh between 70 and 100 kilograms. The male panda is the heavier of the genders, weighing it at somewhere between 75 and 135 kilograms. Giant pandas do not weigh much, even after eating so much bamboo. Bamboo is so nutritionally poor, pandas must consume a high volume to get any benefit out of it. They will spend at least 12 hours of the day dining on it. 99% of a giant pandas diet is bamboo, and they will consume 20kg of it each day. The giant panda can now only be found in 20 isolated patches of bamboo forest in six mountain ranges in China’s Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, with most in the Minshan and Qinling mountains. However, they have been on the endangered species list from 1990 to 2016, before this was switched to vulnerable – mainly due to habitat loss, poaching and poor breeding. The giant panda was once widespread throughout China, and even Myanmar and northern Vietnam. The other benefits to this type of habitat are that shelter and nutrients are present for the bamboo that grows there. This type of forest offers large tree stumps and hollow logs that are the right size for panda dens. Giant pandas have specific needs and they include having at least two species of bamboo and a water source contained within an old-growth conifer forest. Pandas prefer living in damp, misty forested areas. Giant panda typically inhabit regions that are high in elevation, between 4,000 and 11,500 feet, which they share with other rare animals such as the Sichuan takin. Snow Leopards or Jackalls can kill a panda cub. Occasionally Grass, Rodents & Birds.įew Predators. It is a bear that is famous for its love of bamboo, and native to selected mountain ranges located in southwestern China.īamboo (99% Their Diet). The Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is known by a couple of names including simply Panda, Great Panda, and Panda Bear.
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