Giant Pandas

Giant Pandas

MEET THE GIANT PANDA Giant pandas are among the most loved animals in the world. Members of the bear family, giant pandas are easily recognizable because of their thick black-and-white fur. Wild giant pandas remain in only one place on Earth-the forest-covered mountains of western China. They are so rare and endangered that they have become a symbol of the effort to protect Earth's animals.

FOOD AND FEEDING The name panda comes from the language of Nepal, a country near China. Panda means “ bamboo eater, " and bamboo makes up almost all of a panda's diet. Bamboo, a kind of grass that grows extremely tall, is plentiful in the cold, damp, high mountains where pandas live. Bamboo is low in the nutrients that pandas need for energy. For this reason, pandas must eat an amazing amount of bamboo in order to get enough nutrients. An adult panda spends as many as sixteen hours a day eating up to 18 kilograms (40 lbs) of bamboo.

GIANT PANDA LIFE CYCLE Giant pandas are mammals, and like all mammals, they give birth to live young and nurse them. A female panda begins having cubs when she is five or six years old, and then she gives birth to only one or two cubs every few years. A mother panda must work full-time to care for just one baby. She usually raises only one cub and ignores any others, which then die of neglect.

At birth, newborn pandas are tiny, blind, and completely dependent on their mother's care. Because they are so helpless, they are vulnerable to predators. A baby panda develops slowly and cannot walk until the age of four months. It stops nursing and begins eating bamboo by the age of one year. During the first two years of its life, a panda cub stays close to its mother, learning how to survive in the forest. The cub figures out how to find the best food plants and how to tell friend from enemy when it encounters other animals. A young panda's biggest dangers are leopards and wild dogs.

A panda is an adult by the age of three, and it can fend for itself without its mother. It settles in an area called a home range, where it feeds alone. Each panda gives other pandas signs to keep away from its home range. One sign is a smelly liquid that the panda releases from its body and rubs on tree trunks. A panda also marks the edges of its home range by scratching the bark of tree trunks.