Pandas Place

google panda bears

They are really cute and it was my mom’s nickname when she was growing up….that’s about all I know.

General information

Despite being taxonomically a carnivore, the panda has a diet that is overwhelmingly herbivorous. The Giant Panda eats shoots and leaves, living almost entirely on bamboo. Pandas are also known to eat eggs, the occasional fish, and some insects along with their bamboo diet. These are necessary sources of protein. Some zoos also feed their pandas specially formulated biscuits, fruitsicles or other treats to supplement their bamboo intake. Like other subtropical mammals, the Giant Panda does not hibernate.

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 has revealed that Giant Pandas are true bears and part of the Ursidae family. Its closest bear relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America. (Disagreement remains about whether or not the Red Panda belongs in Ursidae; the raccoon family, Procyonidae; or in its own family, Ailuridae.)

Giant Pandas are an endangered species, threatened by continued habitat loss and by a very low birthrate, both in the wild and in captivity. About 1,600 are believed to survive in the wild. Poaching is uncommon; killing a panda was punishable in China by death until a 1997 law changed the penalty to 20 years imprisonment.

The Giant Panda has an unusual paw, with a “thumb” and five fingers; the “thumb” is actually a modified sesamoid bone. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay about this, then used the title The Panda’s Thumb for a book of collected essays. The Giant Panda has a short tail, approximately 15 cm long.

The Giant Panda has long been a favourite of the public, at least partly on account of the fact that the species has an appealing baby-like cuteness that makes it seem to resemble a living teddy bear. The fact that it is usually depicted reclining peacefully eating bamboo, as opposed to hunting, also adds to its image of innocence. Though the Giant Panda is often assumed docile because of their cuteness, they have been known to attack humans, usually assumed to be out of irritation rather than predatory behavior.

Giant Pandas can usually live to be 20-30 years old while living in captivity.

Natural history
No fossils of pandas have been found earlier than a few million years ago. However, DNA analysis of the Giant Panda compared with other bears shows a very early split from the main bear lineage 18 or 15 million years ago. That was about the time when the “dawn bear” (Ursavus) roamed the subtropics of Europe. Fossils from Pleistocene sites throughout East Asia prove the success of the Giant Panda. In the Lang Trang caves of northern Vietnam, fossils of pandas were found, far away from the typical mountain forests where pandas are found presently. Other fossils have been found as far south as Thailand and Burma, going as far north as where Beijing stands today. Fossils also show a second extinct panda species. This species, Ailuropoda minor, was half the size of the modern Giant Panda.

According to a paper published in 2002, the genome of the panda shows evidence of a severe population bottleneck which took place about 43,000 years ago1 and the age of the most recent common ancestor of the current panda populations is estimated to be 43,000 years before present.

Uses and conservation history

Gao Gao, an adult male Giant Panda at San Diego ZooUnlike many other animals in Ancient China, pandas were rarely thought to have medical uses. The only considered medical use was probably of panda urine, to melt needles accidentally swallowed in the throat. 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 tomb. Emperor Taizong of Tang was said to have given Japan two pandas and a sheet of panda skin as a sign of goodwill. Panda skin was considered a sign of courage afterwards, and thus pandas became a target for poachers.

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-Lin 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 the pandas.

Because of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War afterwards, foreigners were unable to poach pandas in China, 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, demands for panda skin from Hong Kong and Japan led to illegal poaching for the black market, acts generally ignored by the local officials at the time.

Though the Sichuan Wolong Reserve was set up by the PRC government in 1958 to save the declining pandas, few advances in the conservation of pandas were made, due to inexperience and insufficient knowledge in ecology. Many believed that the best way to save the pandas was to cage them, and as a result, the pandas were caged for any sign of decline, and they 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 moving residents out of the reserves) helped the chances of survival for pandas. With the ensued efforts and improved conservation methods, wild pandas have started to increase in numbers in some areas.

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.

By 2005, political tensions had eased between mainland China (People’s Republic of China) and Taiwan (Republic of China), causing the mainland to suggest giving Taiwan two pandas as a diplomatic gift. This proposed gift was met by polarized opinions from Taiwan,[3] and in the end Taiwan didn’t accept them. [4]

Reproduction

The baby Giant Panda Su Lin atop a tree San Diego ZooGiant pandas reproduce very slowly, and infant mortality is high. Growth is slow and pandas may not reach sexual maturity until they are five to seven years old. 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. Mating is also a very noisy time, accompanied by moaning and squealing.

The whole gestation period ranges from 83 to 163 days, with 135 days being the average. Baby pandas weigh only 90 to 130 grams, which is about 1/900th 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 with raising the cub. When the cub is first born, it is pink, ***** and blind. It nurses from its mother’s ****** 6–14 times a day for up to 30 minutes each time. For three to four hours, the mother might 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 month after birth, the color pattern of the cub’s fur is fully developed. The cub begins to crawl at 75 to 90 days and the 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 at one year and live with their mother 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. This problem may stem from the captive bears’ lack of experience. In an attempt to remedy this, some keepers in China and Thailand have shown their subjects videos containing footage of mating pandas. In some cases, the bears have been sufficiently stimulated from the videos to engage in reproductive activity. It is not likely that the animals actually learn mating behaviors from the video; rather, scientists believe that hearing the associated sounds has a stimulating effect on the bears exposed to it.

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Name
The name “panda” originates with a Himalayan language, possibly Nepalese. And as used in the West it was originally applied to the Red Panda, to which it was thought to be related. Until its relation to the Red Panda was “discovered” in 1901, the Giant Panda was known as Mottled Bear (Ailuropus melanoleucus) or Parti-colored Bear.

In Chinese, the Giant Panda is called the “large bear cat” (Simplified Chinese: ???; Traditional Chinese: ???; Pinyin: Dàxióngm?o), or sometimes (usually in Taiwan) “cat bear” (Simplified Chinese: ??; Traditional Chinese: ??; Pinyin: M?oxióng).

Most bears’ eyes have round pupils. The exception is the Giant Panda, whose pupils are vertical slits, like cats’ eyes. It is these unusual eyes that inspired the Chinese to call the panda the “giant cat bear”.

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