The Giant Panda belongs to the Genus Ailuropoda and is the only current living relative of that genus. There are two sub species of Ailuropoda, one been Ailuropoda m. melanoleuca which is the well known black and white panda and A. m. qinlingensis or Qinling panda which is brown and white. This blog post will be covering the Ailuropoda m. melanoleuca. This panda is well known due to its black and white markings making appear cute and its gentle behaviour (Swaisgood et al. 2016). Pandas mostly feed on bamboo in the forests but can also eat meat, fish and eggs due to their ursine teeth (panda, 2003).
Giant Panda (left) by J.
Patrick Fischer and Qinling Panda (right) by AilieHM
Pandas
spend majority of their day foraging for bamboo shoots as they are easier to
eat than the bamboo leaves. Pandas will migrate to other areas in search of
food during winter season and will enter villages/towns to feed on garbage. Female
pandas give birth to twins although only one usually survive to adulthood as
the mother will raise the stronger twin and leaves the weaker one to starve. The
male panda does not help with the rearing of the cubs (Lindburg & Baragona,
2004).
Baby Pandas by
Joshua Doubek.
Habitat restriction and degradation are major threats to
the pandas as the forest they depend on is been cleared for agriculture and
timber/firewood, leaving less areas for pandas to live/migrate to. The loss of
forest also affects the bamboo which the panda needs to survive.
Next time, we will be covering a species of ant that are
called living larders.
References
Lindburg, D.G. & Baragona, K. 2004, Giant Pandas -
Biology and Conservation, 1st edn, University of California Press, Berkeley.
panda. (2003). In The MacMillan encyclopedia (2nd ed.).
Aylesbury, UK: Market House Books Ltd.
Swaisgood, R., Wang, D. & Wei, F. 2016. Ailuropoda
melanoleuca (errata version published in 2017). The IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species 2016: e.T712A121745669. Downloaded on 26 July 2019.
Picture references
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