This information has been copied from the China Giant Panda Museum, in order to provide you with accurate information. You can read much more about Giant Pandas and the research that is being done on their website: China Giant Panda Museum
Interesting Life of Giant Pandas Recluse in the forest of Bamboo
The giant panda usually lives alone and scatters among the thick forest of bamboos, thus given another name "the recluse in the forest of bamboos." However, in warm spring when flowers bloom, the pandas come out of their kingdoms and chase after the love. They may pursue each other, and then fall in love and get "married". Skillful Tree Climbers Giant Pandas are skillful tree-climbers. This skill protects them from their natural enemies and provides convenience to their sun bathing, playing, courting and mating. Fond of Drinking Water Pandas often live beside clean rivers or springs, and they like drinking water very much. Specialized Food
Although giant pandas look fat, they are good tree-climbers because this is an instinct inherited from their carnivore ancestors. This capability helps in hunting and running from dangers. Young giant pandas particularly enjoy climbing trees.
Occasionally, the panda has to climb a long way to the valley for water. Sometimes, because the panda is very thirsty, it will try hard to find a water source, and then indulge in water so much that it will finally behave like a drunken man, by lying by the stream. So people have a saying that "Giant Panda Drunk of Water"
Giant pandas are carnivores, but 99% of their food comes from more than 20 kinds of bamboos that grow in the high mountains and the deep valleys of China. With the changes of the seasons, the kinds of the bamboos and the diet of the giant pandas are different. They like bamboo shoots best. From spring to summer, they like to live on the bamboo shoots of the Qiong bamboo (Q.tunidinoda Hsueh et Yi), some bamboos of the madake bamboo category, the wood bamboos in Bashan, the walking stick bamboos, the Chaohua arrow bamboos (Fargesia scabrida Yi), the Huaxi arrow bamboos and the big arrow bamboos. The bamboo shoots are the new trunks of the bamboos that have no branches or leaves and grow from the underground bamboo roots. The bamboo is very small and tender, and the water content is abundant. The nutritional components include: the raw fat is 1.27%, the raw fiber is 33.62%, the crude protein is 10.32%, and the general quantity of sugar is 26.15%. The bamboo shoots are small and tender and they are succulent which taste good and therefore are easy to be digested and absorbed and they are dainty dishes for giant pandas.
From spring to autumn every year,
in order to eat the different kinds of bamboos and bamboo shoots of different heights above sea level, the giant pandas will look for food from the middle mountains to the high mountains, which is called "the chasing of the bamboo shoots".
Special Life and Schedule
As for a bamboo as a whole, the content of the nutrition components increases gradually from the bottom of the trunk to the top. Taking the cold arrow bamboos (Bashania faberi Yi) for example, the raw fat of the bamboo pole is 0.59%, and that of the bamboo branches is 3.37%; the crude protein of the bamboo pole is 4.20%, and that of the bamboo leaves is 19.44%; the raw fiber of the bamboo pole is 46.66%, and that of the bamboo leaves is 24.27%. So, although giant pandas love bamboo shoots, but it is reasonable for them to live on bamboo leaves and the upper bamboo poles of the young first-year bamboos.
Giant pandas living in the wild will look for other plants as their food occasionally, such as beardless wheat, corns, equisetums, green thatch grass, multi-hole gill fungus, wild angelicas, notoperygium roots, the barks of the young firs, and some other plants. They may even act in a way that does not accord with normal behavior in that they will pick up the dead bodies of the animals and eat them or catch the small animals as their food.
People still have doubts on why giant pandas choose to live on bamboos. From an ecological perspective, the specialized eating habit of the giant pandas shows that their ecological niche is very narrow, and they avoid competition by compressing the niche (compressing the width of their range food). The giant pandas just live on the food that is distributed most extensively in the North Temperate Zone, which is not nutritious but abundant and steady in reserve to live on till now, so that people think that pandas are the "winners" who can stand the long test in the evolution process, but pandas have lost the sense of competition and curiosity, so they are observing the convention and holding themselves together in the fate that has a bleak prospect. In the specialization, the giant pandas live on the bamboos that are low in nutrition and energy. In order to live, they try their best to reduce their range of activities, to exercise less and to rest more in order to save the energy.
Range of Activities (Homeland)
Compared to other carnivores that are of similar size as them, their range of activities is the smallest, it is about 4 to 7 square kilometers every year, but that of the black bears can be up to 30 square kilometers. They move about in such a small area all the year round, thus their range of activities is very small, the quantity of activities has accordingly decreased, so that they have reduced the energy spent in rushing about to look for food or drink.
The range of activities of the male "citizens" is about 6 to 7 square kilometers per year. They just move about in half of the range of the homeland per month.
The range of activities of female "citizens" is accordingly smaller than that of the male ones. It covers about 4 to 5 square kilometers and their activities are focused in one tenth of the total range of activity per month.
Time Schedule
Because the energy in the bamboo is very low, in order to reduce the energy consumed as much as possible, the giant pandas mainly spend their time in looking for food and resting. After eating and drinking, they will sleep after climbing to the high branches where it is safe and cool. Sometimes, the pandas will be too sleepy to climb into the trees, so they will sleep on the grass, in the snow field, or on the rocks. They can go on to look for food after having a nap.
The everyday time schedule of a giant panda could be like,
00:00-02:00 Sleep 02:00-07:40 Breakfast 07:40-10:30 Morning Sleep
10:30-11:00 Playing 11:00-12:00 Lunch 12:00-14:30 Noon Break
14:30-21:00 Supper 21:00-24:00 Evening Break
So everyday they spend 54.86 % of time in looking for food, 43.06% of time for rest, but only 2.08% of time for play.
Having survived from the Quaternary glaciers, the giant panda is never
afraid of cold and moisture. Even when the temperature is as low as - 4 to -14 Celsius, it still walks through the thick bamboo clumps loaded with heavy snow. Unlike black bears and many other animals, they don't hide themselves in caves and hibernate but still select and eat bamboos in the cold winter. The giant panda does not fear moisture, either. It lives in the moist forest with a degree of humidity as high as 80%. For this reason that Li Shizhen, the famous pharmacist of the Ming Dynasty, took beddings made of panda fur as a means of preventing moisture and coldness.
You can read more about pandas at these links:
Diseases, Enemies and Ecological Systems
