Bamboo, bamboo, bamboo
A panda eats bamboo for up to 14 hours a day, and gets through more than 12 kilograms of it.
Asian mountains
Giant panda
Ailuropoda melanoleuca
A black and white bear with black ears, black eye patches and a round white face.
- Size
- About 1.5m long
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Bamboo forests in the mountains of central China
Ambles after you, in no hurry. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Giant panda
Good to know
Six things about the giant panda
A false thumb
A long wrist bone works like a thumb, so the panda can grip bamboo stems.
A real bear
Pandas are true bears, built to eat meat, which is why they need so much bamboo to get by.
A tiny cub
A newborn panda is pink, blind and about the size of a stick of butter.
No winter sleep
Bamboo is too poor a food to fatten up on, so pandas do not hibernate. They move downhill instead.
Why black and white?
The white may hide it in snow and the black in shade. The dark ears and eyes may help pandas to know each other.
The real thing
Photos of the giant panda
_(3).jpg){kind=link}
_(1).jpg){kind=link}
_-_445.jpg){kind=link}
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Wild pandas are very hard to see. The breeding centre at Chengdu in China is where most people meet them.
How to help
Pandas are a success story: careful protection moved them from endangered to vulnerable in 2016. Their forests still need joining up.
Keep going