09.08.2020 Animal Of the Week: Giant Panda

Hi!

Today's animal of the week is the Giant Panda! These are fascinating creatures so enjoy!

Habitat:

Sadly, The only remaining giant panda habitat is on the eastern edge of west China. Giant pandas normally live in bamboo forests.

Diet:

A Giant Panda's diet consists of mainly bamboo stems and leaves. However, they occasionally consume other plants and even meat. Although they are very slow and so target injured rodents and other small creatures. As bamboo has little nutritional value, a Giant Panda needs to eat 23-40 kg of it a day.

Dangers:

Giant Pandas are currently classed as 'vulnerable' after a re-surge in numbers in 2016. This means we still need to protect them but the work organisations have already been doing has paid off. Back in the 1980s, only 1 114 Giant Pandas were left in the wild, but in the most recent survey in 2014, an estimated 1 864 Giant Pandas lived in the wild.

The cause of this is excessive poaching back in the 1980s and 90s and deforestation meaning they cannot get any bamboo, which as I have already said, makes up the vast majority of their diet.

The situation is improving, but the work is not over yet as there are still very few giant pandas and we need to continue supporting groups such as WWF who have done so much work and yet warn that climate change could impact the panda population further. You can adopt a panda on WWF's website to support their charity.

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Thank you!

Images:
Close-Up Shot of a Panda Bear on a Tree Branch is owned by .M.Q Huang on pexels.com.
Close-Up Shot of a Panda Bear is owned by .M.Q Huang on pexels.com.

Sources:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/giant-panda
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/giant-panda

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