Giant Panda Bear

Giant Panda Bear, "Skientific name for Giant Panda Bear is Ailuropoda melanoleuca". The Giant Panda Bear is a bear variety that belongs to the Ailuropoda genus of the Ursidae family. The Giant Panda Bear hails from south central China. It is also called as the Panda Bear, which is used to differentiate it from the unconnected Red Panda. The Giant Panda Bear can be easily recognized by the big, unique black spots around its eyes, above its ears, and across its circular-shaped body. Giant Panda Bears mostly live in some mountain ranges in central China, chiefly in Sichuan Province, but they can also be seen in neighboring provinces, namely Gansu and Shaanxi.

The Giant Panda Bear is categorized as a vulnerable animal, mostly because of deforestation, farming, and other developments. It has also been driven out of the lowland regions where it once existed.

Features of Giant Panda Bear

An adult Giant Panda Bear is capable of attaining a maximum body length between 4 feet and 6 feet (1.2 m and 1.9 meters) that includes the tail that ranges in length from 3 29/32 inches to 5 29/32 inches (10 cm to 15 cm). These Giant Panda Bears attain the maximum height between 2 feet and 3 feet (60 cm and 90 cm) at the shoulder. Usually, male Giant Panda Bear are 10 to 20% bigger than the female Giant Panda Bear and they can have a maximum body weight of 350 lbs (160 kg), whereas the female bears can have a body weight of 150 lbs (70 kg).

The body of the Giant Panda Bear has a typical shape, and it has black color fur on its ears, muzzle, eye patches, arms, legs, and shoulders. The remaining parts of the coat of the Giant Panda Bear are white. These Giant Panda Bears have a thick, wooly coat that keeps them warm in the chilly forests of its home. The shape of the skull of the Giant Panda Bear is similar to that of durophagous carnivorans and it has 3-dimensional canine teeth, with the bite strength of 2603.47 Newtons and a bite force percentage of 292.

The paw of the Giant Panda Bear has five fingers in which the thumb actually has a customized sesamoid bone that helps the animal to hold bamboo during eating. The tail of the Giant Panda Bear is considered the second-longest tail in their family, with the length, ranging from 4 inches to 6 inches (10 cm to 15 cm).

Diet of Giant Panda Bear

Though the Giant Panda Bear belongs to the order Carnivora, it mostly feeds on bamboo. These Giant Panda Bears will occasionally feed on wild tubers, grasses, or even the birds’ meat, carrion, or rodents in the wild. In the captive, they are fed with eggs, honey, fish, shrub leaves, yams, bananas, or oranges, together with a specially made diet.

Behavior of Giant Panda Bear

The Giant Panda Bear is a terrestrial animal and it mostly spends its life in wandering and feeding in the Qinling Mountain bamboo forests and in the mountainous Sichuan Province. The Giant Panda Bear are generally lonely, and each adult bear has a definite territory, and a female Giant Panda Bear will not forbear other female bears in her range. The Giant Panda Bears communicate through scent marking and vocalization, such as spraying urine or clawing trees. The Giant Panda Bears are capable of climbing and taking shelter in rock crevices or hollow trees, but they do not establish enduring dens. Due to this reason, the Giant Panda Bear do not hibernate, which is like other subtropical animals. Instead, they will move to altitudes with warmer temperatures. Usually, these bears will chiefly count on the spatial memory instead of the visual memory.

The average lifespan of the Giant Panda Bear is 20 years in the wild, whereas in the captive, they can live up to 30 years.