Giant Panda

The giant panda is a large black-and-white bear that lives in the mountain forests of central China. It has a round white face, black ears, black patches around its eyes, and a black band across its shoulders. An adult panda weighs between 200 and 300 pounds. That is about the weight of a large refrigerator. Pandas are one of the most recognized animals in the world, and they are a national symbol of China.

Pandas are bears, but they eat almost nothing but bamboo. Other bears eat meat, fish, fruit, and honey. Pandas eat the stems, leaves, and shoots of bamboo plants for about 12 hours every day. An adult panda eats 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo in a single day. It has to eat so much because bamboo is not very nutritious. Pandas have a special wrist bone that sticks out like a thumb. They use this extra "thumb" to grip bamboo stalks while they chew.

Scientists have long wondered why a bear would switch to such a strange diet. Millions of years ago, pandas ate meat like other bears. Over time, their bodies changed to live on bamboo, which grows thick across their mountain home. But their stomachs are still shaped like a meat-eater's stomach, not a plant-eater's. That is part of why they have to eat so much to survive.

Baby pandas are shockingly tiny. A newborn panda weighs only about four ounces, which is smaller than a mouse. The cub is pink, blind, and almost hairless. It will not grow its black-and-white fur for several weeks. Cubs stay with their mothers for about 18 months before living on their own.

Pandas were once in serious danger of dying out. By the 1980s, fewer than 1,000 were left in the wild. People had cut down huge areas of bamboo forest for farms and roads. China made protecting pandas a national goal. The government created more than 60 panda reserves and passed strict laws against hunting them. Today there are about 1,800 pandas in the wild. In 2016, scientists moved the giant panda off the "endangered" list and onto the "vulnerable" list, which is still serious but better than before.

Pandas are also famous travelers. For decades, China has loaned pandas to zoos in other countries as a kind of gift between governments. People call this "panda diplomacy." Millions of visitors line up to see pandas each year, making them some of the most popular animals in any zoo.