A panda's daily diet consists almost entirely of the leaves, stems and shoots of various bamboo species.
Bamboo contains very little nutritional value so pandas must eat 12-38kg every day to meet their energy needs.
But they do branch out, with about 1% of their diet comprising other plants and even meat. While they are almost entirely vegetarian, pandas will sometimes hunt for pikas and other small rodents.
Indeed, as members of the bear family, giant pandas possess the digestive system of a carnivore, although they have evolved to depend almost entirely on bamboo.
This reliance on bamboo leaves them vulnerable to any loss of their habitat – currently the major threat to their survival.
Key Points
Pandas in the wild eat bamboo, leaves, eggs, and rodents.
When Pandas are pregnant, they are known to consume more protein, including lizards!
Pandas enjoy eating wheat, pumpkins, kidney beans, and livestock feed while in captivity.
There’s often public confusion around the relationship between the two identified species of pandas — but it only makes sense when you consider that these animals are only distantly related and demonstrate dramatic differences in everything from physiology to habitat to behaviors.
The name panda is derived from the Nepali word for “bamboo eater”, and the link between these animals breaks down almost entirely according to dietary and nutritional habits.
Despite being the less well-known of the two, the facts show red pandas earned the name ten years before the giant panda in 1825. It’s an example of how challenging it was to trace evolutionary family trees before the advent of DNA testing, but it’s also proof of how convergent evolution can cause distinct species to develop the same highly specialized — and highly unusual — behaviors in isolation from one another.
One way to better understand how natural selection influences diets is to identify animals as generalists or specialists. Generalists can subsist on a variety of different food sources — and this behavior has allowed omnivorous coyotes to find suitable ecosystems stretching over most of the United States and herbivorous elephants to serve as African gardeners pruning vegetation along migration routes that can extend over 60 miles.
Specialists like flamingos and koalas — which feed primarily on shrimp and eucalyptus leaves respectively — often manage to flourish by finding a food source that’s readily available but has little competitive demand. But the practical facts behind specialization also make them particularly vulnerable to habitat destruction.
This is the case with red pandas and giant pandas, which have two of the most specialized and bizarre diets on the planet. The latter subsists of a diet that’s 99% bamboo species, while the former has a slightly more varied diet that’s between 85 and 95% bamboo. If that seems like a boring diet, there’s at least some solace in the fact that there’s a little variety sprinkled in there. Roughly 40 bamboo species can be found in the overlapping habitats of red and giant pandas.
Giant pandas are known to selectively feed on over 20 different varieties, while red pandas will usually feed on only one or two. Despite that, red pandas may exhibit a more varied diet overall since they feed on a wider range of foods outside of bamboo.
Giant pandas eat a diet that includes:
Bamboo shoots, leaves, and culm (roughly 20 species, 99% of overall diet)
Meat (pikas, rodents, insects)
Carrion
Crops (wheat, pumpkins, kidney beans, livestock feed)
There is strong evidence that animals try to forage as effectively as possible to meet their nutritional needs, mixing dietary items to provide a full complement of nutrients," writes primatologist Jessica Rothman of the City University Of New York's Hunter College, who was not involved in the study, in an e-mail. "In areas with only one edible plant, animals may try to consume different parts of the same food."
That's exactly what the pandas seem to be doing. The two bamboo species in Qinling, wood bamboo and arrow bamboo, grow at different elevations and sprout new shoots and leaves at different times of the year. The tracking collars revealed that during mating season in the spring, pandas fed on young wood bamboo shoots, which are rich in nitrogen and phosphorous. In June, the wood bamboo shoots had matured and contained fewer nutrients, so pandas migrated to higher elevations and started eating young arrow bamboo shoots. However, both species' shoots had low calcium levels, which pushed pandas toward the next dietary shift in mid-July: young arrow bamboo leaves, which are rich in calcium.
This dietary juggling act appears to affect panda reproduction, the team reports online this month in Functional Ecology. Although the animals mate in the spring, they undergo "delayed implantation"—the embryo remains in a state of arrested development in the mother's uterus until it attaches and resumes growth. The authors speculate that panda embryos continue development only after there is sufficient calcium in the diet.
In August, females return to the lower elevations and deliver tiny, pink panda babies. The adult mothers start eating young wood bamboo leaves, which have sufficient nutrients, including the calcium necessary for lactation. Pandas have the shortest gestation period among bears, about 2 to 3 months compared with 6 months in other species. They also have the smallest offspring—newborns weigh just 90 to 130 grams, whereas other bear cubs are a more brawny 300 to 400 grams. Their small size could be due to the nutrient limitations of their habitat, the authors say.
But even nutritional juggling may not allow pandas to survive the winter. Wood bamboo leaves age over this season, and their nutrient levels drop, causing high mortality among pandas. In fact, records from Qinling show that among 25 cases of dead or ill pandas over the past 37 years, more than half occurred in March and April, right after the hardships of winter.
The study helps explain how pandas survive on such a limited diet, says wildlife biologist Dajun Wang of Peking University in Beijing, who has worked on pandas in Qinling. But he says the animals may be getting nutrients from other places as well. "I have seen them scavenge from time to time," he writes in an e-mail. "They may also get calcium and other nutrients from licking rocks."
Pandas are one of the world's most fascinating vegetarians. Their digestive systems evolved to process meat, yet they eat nothing but bamboo—all day, every day. A new study reveals how these animals survive on a diet that should kill them.
Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are a type of bear, and they still retain a meat eater's digestive system, with a simple stomach and a short small intestine. They don't have a four-chambered stomach like a cow to digest plants efficiently, and a pure bamboo diet contains hardly any protein and a lot of indigestible fiber.
To understand how pandas subsist on such a diet, researchers radio-collared three male and three female pandas in the Qinling Mountains of China and observed what they ate in their natural habitats for 6 years. The team also analyzed the panda diet in depth by measuring the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and calcium—the three most essential nutrients for mammals—in the plants they ate.
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Giant pandas eat a diet that includes:
Bamboo shoots, leaves, and culm (roughly 20 species, 99% of overall diet)
Meat (pikas, rodents, insects)
Carrion
Crops (wheat, pumpkins, kidney beans, livestock feed)
Red pandas eat a diet that includes:
Bamboo shoots and leaves (1-2 species, 85 – 95% of overall diet)
Meat (insects, mice, rats, eggs, and small lizards or birds when pregnant)
Plants (bark, lichen, roots, grass, flowers)
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Other vegetation (berries, fruits, mushrooms, acorns)
Additionally to bamboo and the occasional protein, pandas also love fruit! They especially love apples. Pandas have also been known to like something known as a “panda cake” which is basically just steamed corn bread. In the summer, pandas enjoy frozen ice with bits of apple inside them to cool them down. Furthermore, Pandas enjoy veggies like carrots, ginseng and even some funguses.
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