Giant Pandas

I vowed to not write a "I did this, then I did this, and then..." blog for various reasons, the most important ones being it focusses on chronology rather than events and it makes for unimaginably dull reading. So mulling over what topics were relevant, this one popped up.

Granted, seeing Giant pandas was not the most important event on my trip, but they do make for good discussions. We spent a sunny afternoon in The Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base in Cheng Du, and I accidentally opened Pandora's box by saying that Giant Pandas, from an evolutionary point of view, would not survive without human help, a phrase some girls took to mean that I was a savage, heartless bear-slaughterer. Here is the argument:


Giant Pandas are known as "living fossils", meaning that there are an old species. Species on average only last 2-3 million years before they are replaced by new species (evolution / extinction), but the Giant Panda has been around for more than 8 million years. These species often have few close relatives (evolutionary speaking), since the common link with other animals is considerably earlier.

Giant Pandas are smaller than most big bears, around 5 feet long and weighing some 250 pounds. They seem shorter (granted, I have not seen many other bears) since their back is curved, as they seem to spend a considerable amount of time sitting down. Their diet is 99% bamboo, and they can eat up to 30 pounds of shoots a day (their favourite part).

So far, they have survived for such a long time, precisely because of their few numbers. Their diet restricts them to areas with bamboo, an area which could have spanned the size the Europe before humans entered the scene. They pose no threat to human livestock so never competed with humans (like, say, wolves have), and they are too big to have any natural enemies. But they are in no way adaptive.

Giant Pandas only eat bamboo, which contains almost no nutrition, and they utilize only 20% of what they eat. Instead of diversifying their diet, they spend around 16 hours a day eating bamboo and cut down on physical activity, which gives them the appearance of being lazy (it is so bad that sexual reproduction can be too physically strenuous that they just don't bother - evolutionary suicide). They are solitary animals, not tolerating trespassers on their turf, meaning that the Giant Panda requires a large space for large numbers. This is the main reason they are endangered - human expansion has cut down the size of their habitat (literally).

Reproduction is key to survival, and Giant Pandas are disastrous at it. Females have oestrous cycles once a year, lasting for 2-3 days (!), making it difficult for a lone male to find, court, and mate a female in another territory (especially since they are lazy creatures). They often give birth to two cubs although they can only care for one in the wild. Cubs are born premature every time, do not open their eyes for 6 weeks, cannot crawl for 11 weeks, and weigh a 1000th of the mother. Mothers' also lack a parenting ability, which means that first-time mothers have been seen to get so shocked at the cub's  shrieks that they hit it to death. Perfect.

So will Giant Pandas become extinct in the next, say, 100 years? No. The Chinese are completely mad about them, and the Panda ranks high (below the Dragon) in cultural identity. There has also been huge advances in artificial insemination, alleviating the need for the animals to actually mate. Centers such as the one in Cheng Du also feed the bears extra nutritional cakes and fruit, and has currently bred more than 100 Pandas. But the Giant Panda in the wild, currently estimated around 1600, will still be under threat.

I final remark goes to the Giant Panda as the logo for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). I am not sure whether the logo makes the pathos statement that "we should save cute animals", the ethos statement that "because animals cannot survive, we should help them to", or the logos statement that "without us, animals such as the Panda would be long gone". I subscribe to the second statement; that we should help save the Giant Panda for its cultural influences and its calm, natural beauty. But from an evolutionary point of view, because of human growth and their stubbornness to stay the same, they don't stand a chance.