16 March: National Panda Day

It's National Panda Day. When we think of a panda, what springs to mind is the giant panda, the black and white bear found in China. There are also red pandas, although the two aren't related. Giant pandas are bears while Red Pandas belong to the Raccoon family.

1. The giant panda's scientific name is Ailuropoda melanoleuca, which means 'Black and White cat-foot'. The word "panda" is probably from the Nepalese word poonya, which means “bamboo-eating animal” or “plant-eating animal.”
2. Which is a good description as a panda spends 14-16 hours a day eating Bamboo. Even though their digestive systems can cope with eating meat, and they will occasionally eat small animals and fish, 99% of their diet is bamboo, up to 12 kilograms a day. They have evolved into bamboo eating machines with an extra "thumb" for holding bamboo stalks (a modified wrist bone). They have extremely strong jaw and cheek muscles which could easily chew an aluminium dish into tiny pieces, and allow them to bite through bamboo stalks it would be hard to cut with an axe. A panda’s throat has a special lining to protect it from bamboo splinters. They don't hibernate like other bears because they couldn't store enough energy from this diet to keep them alive through the winter - they have to keep eating.
3. At the other end of the digestive system, they have a hard time digesting all the fibre. An adult panda may poo up to 40 times a day and produce 60 pounds of droppings daily.
4. All pandas in zoos around the world are on loan from China. They are the most expensive animals to keep in a zoo, costing five times more than the second most expensive animal, which is the Elephant.
5. They were virtually unknown in the rest of the world until the 20th century. The first live giant Panda to leave China for a zoo in Chicago in 1936 was named Su-Lin. His name meant “a little bit of something very cute”.
6. A panda’s bones are twice as heavy as the bones of other animals the same size.
7. Pandas are endangered, with an estimated 2,000 or so individuals living in the wild. Scientific opinion is divided about whether their numbers are dwindling because of human activity or if they are dying out naturally because they are inefficient at surviving and breeding. They're certainly not the most fertile animals out there. A female panda is only fertile for about three days every year, and her cubs stay with her for about three years before going off on their own. Some male pandas kept in captivity with a female appear not to know what to do with a fertile female panda when presented with one on a plate. Some zoos have resorted to showing their pandas films of other pandas doing it, or giving them viagra! When all else failed they'd artificially inseminate the female. Even then there's a danger the mother panda will roll over and crush her cub (newborn panda cubs are smaller in relation to their mother than any other animals apart from marsupials). Sometimes they'll have twins, but the mother tends to leave the weaker one to die. Mother pandas in captivity give birth to twins more often than mothers in the wild do.
8. There is a legend which explains how pandas got their distinctive markings. They were originally all white, but when a leopard killed a small girl who tried to save a panda cub from it, the pandas all went to her funeral wearing armbands of black ashes. In their grief, they rubbed their eyes and hugged each other and covered their ears, and that is how they got their black bits.
9. Chinese folklore says that if someone swallows a Needle, panda pee can dissolve it. Sleeping on panda fur helps keep away ghosts and helps foretell the future.
10. As well as being the symbol of the World Wild Life Fund, they have been a symbol of peace in China. A flag with a picture of a panda on it served a similar function in ancient China to a white flag today - it was used to stop a battle and call a truce. Their markings may have contributed to this, with the black and white resembling a yin and yang symbol. Pandas are generally peaceful by nature and a demonstration of what happens when yin and yang are balanced in nature.

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