Artober 2020, Vunerable and endangered animals. Day 20: Giant panda
In the bamboo forests of the moutains of southwestern China lives the giant panda, one of the world's rarest mammals. About 1800 are left in the wild.
The panda is an omnivore and eat almost nothing but bamboo shoots and leaves. Occasionally they eat other vegetation, fish or small animals but bamboo accounts for 99% of their diet. They eat fast, a lot and for a long time, about 12 hours a day. This is because bamboo isn't very nutritious so to stay healthy they have to eat up to 15% of their body weight in 12 hours.
Despite the impression of being quite clumsy animals pandas are very good climbers and also very good swimmers. Male pandas sometimes do handstands against trees to relax.
The panda has been the symbol of WWF since it's formation in 1961 and has since become a wellknown symbol all over the world for species conservation. The inspiration came from a giant panda named Chi-Chi who lived in London Zoo. After her death Chi-Chi was donated to Natural History Museum in London where she is on display to this day.
The panda population is slowly increasing which means the panda has moved from being endangered to being vunerable. But there is still risks to the species. Mainly habitat loss as infrastructure keeps increasing forcing the pandas into smaller areas where they get isolated from other pandas, preventing mating. Or in areas where there isn't enough bamboo for them to survive.
What you can do for the panda:
-Support organisations and petitions that work to protect areas where pandas live and support the local communities
-Adopt a panda through WWF to help conserve them
