| Order
Family
Genus and Species |
Carnivora
Ursidae
Ailuropoda Melanoleuca
|
| Status | Vulnerable
|
| Geographical Distribution | Mountain ranges in China in the Gansu,
Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces
|
| Physical Description | Physically similar to bears
Black fur on its ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs, and shoulders. The rest of the animal’s coat is white.
|
| Size | 60 to 90 cm tall on all fours
1.2 to 1.8 m long.
Males are larger than females Weigh up to 113 kg in the wild.
Females rarely reach 104 kg.
|
| Natural Habitat | 5000-10,000 feet above sea level
Broadleaf and coniferous forests with a dense understory of bamboo
Torrential rains or dense mist throughout the year
|
| Social Structure | Generally solitary
Communicate through scent marks, calls, and occasional meetings. May form communities of 7-15 individuals Live in territories Avoid socializing with other groups. |
| Reproduction | Breeding maturity : 4-8
Reproduction till: 20 Ovulation: Once a year, 2-3 days Attract mates by: Calls and scents |
| Diet | 99% Bamboo
1% others: eg small animals, other plants… |
| Lifespan | Not sure.
Captive panda lifespan up to 35 years.
|
What do Pandas eat?
No surprises here, pandas’ diet consists of 99% bamboo. However, since bamboo has low nutritional value, pandas have to eat around 12-38 kg of bamboo a day to meet their nutritional needs.
This is incredibly interesting considering pandas still have the gastrointestinal systems of carnivores, meaning that they should not be able to survive on their current diet of bamboo since they lack the enzymes to digest these plants. In fact, this diet should kill them. Yet somehow, it doesn’t. This diet causes them to be susceptible to gut problems. Again, this too is interesting.
According to natural selection, those with genes best fitted for the environment should remain while those who are unable to fit into the environment would be removed from the gene pool.
However, if that were the case, why would pandas eat bamboo? The theory is that at some point in the past, meat was scarce and to survive, pandas begun eating bamboo, which was more readily available in their habitats. However, this does not explain why bamboo has become the main part of their diet. There is little reason for them sticking to a bamboo diet, after food became readily available, unless it took so long for other food sources to become available that pandas already grew accustomed to eating bamboo. Even so, it doesn’t seem to be an evolutionary sound choice and should have been weeded out, given the amounts of bamboo they must eat each day in order to meet their nutritional needs.
If their most evolutionary sound choice was to eat bamboo, then natural selection should also ensure only the genes of pandas who are best able to digest bamboo be passed down, meaning that by now pandas should be well adjusted to eating bamboo. However, this too is not the case. Pandas are still very susceptible to gut problems from eating bamboo, which many suspect is the cause of their low fertility rates and bad health. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is very odd. A species’ main evolutionary drive should be to survive and propagate their species. A diet of bamboo, which hinders both of these evolutionary drives, should thus be eliminated.
In the mean time, pandas are still observed eating small animals, showing that they are still able to take on a carnivorous appetite. This raises the question: why continue a bamboo diet when they are still able to eat meat? It should not be due to biological reasons since they still hold the digestive systems of a carnivore, so what is the explanation for this?
