The Panda Bear Diet: Far Beyond Bamboo
The panda bear’s diet is known to everyone: it consists mainly of bamboo consumption. However, one study suggests that this animal’s ancestors ate not only this food, but also meat and other plants.
The panda bear’s diet is something very peculiar
The panda is a peculiar animal. Although it is classified as a carnivore due to its anatomy, it is actually a herbivorous animal that feeds only on bamboo. The panda bear’s diet is made up of more than 30 species of bamboo. In addition, it also includes insects and even eggs.
It was always known that the panda’s diet had changed many years ago. Its carnivorous past is one of the reasons the panda’s digestive system is unable to digest the cellulose that is present in plants.
As such, the panda’s diet is very inefficient. They can spend up to 14 hours a day eating nearly 40 kg of bamboo. Although the panda’s jaw is capable of breaking these woody trunks, the digestion of this type of food is very difficult for this animal.
However, the panda bear’s diet has a great survival advantage for the species. It is exclusive, so there is hardly any competition for the food the bear consumes. The downside of this peculiarity is that dependence on a specific plant species limits the expansion of the species and the places where it can obtain resources.
A new study changes everything
A new study suggests that the panda’s diet was different not too long ago. By isotope analysis carried out on current and fossil pandas, the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was able to compare the diet of these animals with that of their ancestors.
Thanks to this isotopic analysis, the researchers found that the diet of the giant panda and its ancestors changed twice. First, it shifted from an omnivorous diet with a high consumption of meat to an herbivorous diet. In a second moment, there was the specialization for the consumption of bamboo.
Traditionally, the ancestors of pandas were thought to be carnivores, but this type of diet dates back to two million years ago. This study suggests that the panda bear’s dependence on bamboo may have occurred 5,000 years ago, in the most recent prehistoric phase.
However, the reasons for this change are not clear and the study does not offer many answers. The change in the panda bear’s diet may have coincided with advancing human pressures on populations in southern China, which were studied in this scientific work.
an endangered species
The panda bear is a solitary species that gathers only in the reproductive period. In fact, pandas do not share territory and, unlike other bear species, do not hibernate.
The species is considered a symbol of conservation, which is why it is featured on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) logo. Thanks to its charisma, the resources allocated for the conservation of the panda are large.
In this sense, China has been working hard for the conservation of pandas, which has been gradually reducing the risk of extinction for this species. In Sichuan, there is a center specializing in panda breeding with 100 specimens. In addition, the penalty for hunting this animal is 20 years in prison.
