Pandas
Table of Contents
Home Sweet Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
What Pandas Eat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
Different Types of Pandas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
Size of Pandas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
What Pandas drink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
Home Sweet Home
Most pandas now live in bamboo forests high in the mountains of
western china and also some pandas live in a few mountain ranges in
central china, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces. Once they lived in
low land areas, but however because of forest clearing, farming, and
other development now restrict pandas to live in the mountains. Giant
pandas live in broadleaf and carnivorous forests with a dense
understory of bamboo, at elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet.
Torrential rains or dense mist throughout the year t throughout the
year characterizes these forests, they are often shrouded in heavy
clouds.
What Pandas Eat
A wild pandas diet is almost exclusively (99 percent) bamboo.
The balance consists of other grasses and occasional small rodents or
musk deer fawns. In zoos, giant pandas eat bamboo, sugar cane, rice
gruel, a special high-fiber biscuit, carrots, apples, and sweet potatoes.
The panda's diet consists of almost entirely of the leaves, stems and
shoots of various bamboo species.
Different types of Pandas
There are only two different types of panda species in the world,
the giant pandas and the red pandas. Despite their common name, the
two are not scientifically related to each other.
Size of Pandas
About the size of American black bear, giant pandas stand between two
and three feet tall at the shoulder (on all four legs), and reach 4 to six
feet long. Males are larger than females, weighing up to 250 pounds in
the wild. Females rarely reach 220 pounds.
How much pandas drink
Wild giant pandas get much of the water they need from bamboo, a
grass whose contents are about half water. (New bamboo shoots are
about 90 percent water.) But giant pandas need more water than what
bamboo alone can provide. So almost every day wild pandas also drink
fresh water from rivers and streams that are fed by melting snowfall
high in the mountain peaks. The temperate forests of central China
where giant pandas live receive about 30 to 40 inches of rain and snow
a year. Charleston, West Virginia, a city with a similar temperate
climate, receives about the same amount of rain and snow; an average
of 42.5 inches a year.
Glossary
Broadleaf: A tree or plant with wide, flat leaves.
Carnivorous: Feeding on other animals.
Exclusively: To the exclusion of others; only.
Gruel: A thin liquid food of oatmeal or other meal boiled in milk or
water.
Species: A group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals
capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.
Temperate: Of, relating to, or denoting a region or climate
characterized by mild temperatures.