Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
Giant pandas are rare and elusive, yet are one of the most popular of all animals. Famous for their love of bamboo, little else is known about their behaviour in the wild, and their breeding success in captivity is poor.
What do they sound like?
Watch video clips from past programmes (3 clips)
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Panda cub
Mating pandas
Wild China
The holy grail of panda behaviour: courtship and mating filmed in its entirety.
Panda profile
Wild China
Rare sightings of the elusive and shy wild panda doing what it does best - munching bamboo.
Earth News
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Giant panda ancestor not so giant
The giant panda's earliest known ancestor was much smaller than its modern-day counterpart, scientists say.
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Giant panda sex secrets revealed
The giant panda's courtship and mating sequence - from boisterous beginning to noisy ending - has been filmed in the wild for what may be a TV first.
About the Giant panda
The Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, literally meaning "cat-foot black-and-white") is a mammal native to central-western and south western China. The Giant Panda is a member of the Ursidae (bear) family. It is easily recognized by its large, distinctive black patches around the eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. Though belonging to the order Carnivora, the Giant Panda has a diet which is 99% bamboo. The Giant Panda may eat other foods such as honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, and bananas when available.
The Giant Panda lives in a few mountain ranges in central China, mainly in Sichuan, but also in the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Due to farming, forest clearing, and other development, the Giant Panda has been driven out of the lowland areas where it once lived.
The Giant Panda is a conservation reliant endangered species. According to a 2007 report, China has 239 Giant Pandas in captivity and another 27 living outside the country. It is also estimated that around 1,590 pandas are currently living in the wild. However, a 2006 study, via DNA analysis, estimated that there might be as many as 2,000 to 3,000 Giant Pandas in the wild. Though reports show that the numbers of wild pandas are on the rise, the International Union for Conservation of Nature believes there is not enough certainty to remove the Giant Panda from the endangered animal list.
While the dragon has historically served as China's national emblem, in recent decades the Giant Panda has also served as an emblem for the country. Its image appears on a large number of modern Chinese commemorative silver, gold, and platinum coins. Though the Giant Panda is often assumed to be docile, it has been known to attack humans, presumably out of irritation rather than predatory behavior.
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The Giant panda is
Adaptation data provided by Animal Diversity Web
Where can I see them?
This region contains the following habitats:
Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder
Conservation Status
The Giant panda is Endangered (IUCN 3.1)
- EX - Extinct
- EW
- CR - Threatened
- EN - Threatened
- VU - Threatened
- NT
- LC - Least concern
Population trend: Decreasing
Year assessed: 2008
What's the threat?
Habitat loss is the greatest cause of the population decline, and continues to be the main threat to the species. Large areas of forest are cleared for agriculture, timber and firewood, and the pandas have been forced up higher into the mountains as China’s growing human population encroaches onto their habitat. Even the pandas protected in reserves are not safe from human activities – rates of habitat loss and fragmentation within the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province (the largest protected area designated for conserving the species) have actually increased since the reserve was formed in 1975. Habitat fragmentation can have a catastrophic effect on giant panda populations. As part of its life cycle, bamboo experiences periodic die-back every 15-120 years depending on the species; the plants blossom, drop their seeds and then die. Often vast areas of forest disappear at the same time, and it can take as long as 20 years before a new crop can support a giant panda population. Previously pandas would have migrated to new areas to find alternative bamboo sources. However, today this is not possible, and pandas stranded in isolated patches of habitat are at risk from starvation during bamboo die-back.
Illegal poaching continues to threaten the species despite extensive protective measures. Wild pandas are illegally killed for their pelts, and are sometimes caught by accident in traps set for other animals. Even at low levels, poaching can severely affect panda populations because the species has such a slow potential rate of reproductive growth.
Information about the threat is provided by the Zoological Society of London's EDGE of Existence programme
Elsewhere on the web
- Giant panda - Ailuropoda melanoleuca (arkive.org)
- Ailuropoda (animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu)
- IUCN Red List information (iucnredlist.org)
- San Diego Zoo: live webcam (sandiegozoo.org)
- Giant Panda (wikipedia.org)
- Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) (edgeofexistence.org)
Site links
BBC links
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