The panda, with its distinctive black and white coat, is adored by the world and considered a national treasure in China. This bear also has a special significance for WWF because it has been our logo since our founding in 1961 Sqex me link.
Pandas live mainly in temperate forests high in the mountains of southwest China, where they subsist almost entirely on bamboo. They must eat around 26 to 84 pounds of it every day, depending on what part of the bamboo they are eating. They use their enlarged wrist bones that function as opposable thumbs.
A newborn panda is about the size of a stick of butter—about 1/900th the size of its mother—but females can grow up to about 200 pounds, while males can grow up to about 300 pounds as adults. These bears are excellent tree climbers despite their bulk
Pandas’ molars are very broad and flat. The shape of the teeth helps the animals crush the bamboo shoots, leaves, and stems that they eat. They can chomp on bamboo up to one-and-a-half inches thick.
To get the bamboo to their mouths, they hold the stems with their front paws, which have enlarged wrist bones that act as thumbs for gripping. A panda should have at least two bamboo species where it lives, or it will starve. A scarcity in bamboo threatens the already limited panda population.
An adult female panda weighs 200 pounds. Pandas can climb as high as 13,000 feet and are also very good swimmers. Sometimes male pandas relax by doing handstands against trees.
Pandas are shy; they don’t venture into areas where people live. This restricts pandas to very limited areas.
Pandas eat almost nothing but bamboo shoots and leaves. Occasionally they eat other vegetation, fish, or small mammals, but bamboo accounts for 99 percent of their diets.
Pandas eat fast, they eat a lot, and they spend about 12 hours a day doing it. The reason: They digest only about a fifth of what they eat. Overall, bamboo is not very nutritious. To stay healthy, they have to eat a lot—up to 15 percent of their body weight in 12 hours—so they eat fast.