As we take a little break between the birthday celebrations, I thought I would bring over this information from the China Wolong Panda website. There is alot of very good information about giant pandas (especially, Basic Science page) at this site along with photos and videos, so be sure to spend some time there when you have a chance.
Note: All of the info below is copied right from the Wolong Panda Website, with the exception of the photos and videos where clicking on them will take you to the original source.
The wild pandas are solitary animals. Each individual has its own specific
territory. The male’s is usually very large, nearly 30km2,
with an overlap to several female ones’. The pandas like being alone by
nature, and they live by themselves.
They rest in the day and come out
at night. They don’t have a fixed place of living; they often move
according to the season change.
In the spring, they stay in the woods at high altitude, and then move to the shady slope where there are fresh bamboos in the summer. In the fall, they are living on the warm sunny side of the mountain about high and prepare themselves for the coming winter.
Each year, April and May are the reproduction period for the pandas. And
only at this time, the male and female live together. But when May is
passed, they once again split.
Besides what has been mentioned above, the pandas have some other habits.
Pandas like water. They build their homes near the flowing stream, so
it is easy to gain access to the fresh water. Even in chilly winter,
they don’t take ice or snow to quench their thirst, but go to the
unfrozen spring for drinking. They love water so much that they even can
paddle. The video below features Lun Lun at Zoo Atlanta. Thanks to smileybears of flickr for recording this.
The pandas are also good at climbing trees. When they climb a tree, there
usually are three situations: the coming of the courtship, escaping from
the danger, or a way that the weak avoid the strong when they meet.
In
most cases, the pandas are docile animal. They seldom initiate an
attack on other animals or humans. Even when they meet in the wild, the
pandas always evade. Once the female becomes a mother, its baby is
sacrosanct. A mere caring look from others can enrage the mother.
The giant pandas live in the dense bamboo forests which is in the mountain
valleys located in the eastern edge of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western
China, lived a mysterious "hermit" life.
the giant pandas like climbing trees.
The giant pandas like drinking water and seemed that's one of their favorites.
The panda belong to the carnivore, but 99% of their food is bamboos. The
young shoots are tender, juicy and tasty; they are easy to digest and
absorb, and thus they are the pandas’ fine delicacy. From spring to fall
every year, to eat different types of bamboos and shoots at different
altitudes, they migrate from the medium altitude to the high grounds.
This is called “the bamboo chase”.
The
pandas living in the wild feed on other food once in a while, such as
wheat, corn, angelica and so on. Sometimes, quite abnormally, they hunt
small animals for food or even eat other animals’ corpses.
When we mention the panda, we all think that they live on bamboos, thus are
pure vegetarian.
In fact, when they are hungry, they also eat angelica,
couch grass, and the corns and wheat in the farmers’ fields, or they may
even be the uninvited guests to people’s houses looking for bones and
chops for food. In this way, the pandas are also called the monks who
eat meat. And people often use the goat’s head as a bait to catch them.
(See
Wild panda comes to village to feast February post)
Living in the bamboo woods with the pandas are Rhizomys sinensis. The
pandas are expert on catching them, according to Yu Fuqiang, a forest
administrative officer in
They first dig the bamboo roots with their sharp claws, looking and
smelling. And then, they pat on the mouse hole with the palms and listen
to the movement underneath. If a rat untimely comes out, they snatch it
and eat it.
Read more interesting information about the lives of giant pandas at the
China Wolong Panda website.
