Giant pandas: the facts

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Giant pandas are native to south and east Asia. They live in the mountains of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, central China.

First panda sent back to wild dies "in fight" Bear that survived freak tornado shot dead by camper Panda attacks boy in Beijing zoo As its ursine appearance suggests, it is a member of the bear family; similar in size to an American black bear, the giant panda stands 2-3 feet tall at the shoulder and can be up to six feet long nose to tail. Males can weigh up to 250lb (115kg). Captive panda Chuang Chuang Despite their Latin name, Carnivora ursidae, giant pandas are almost exclusively vegetarian; 99% of their diet consists of bamboo, with the rest being other grasses and occasional small animals. Their carnivorous heritage has left them ill-equipped to digest tough bamboo, and pandas need to eat for between 10 and 16 hours a day to get sufficient nutrients. Their distinctive coloration, white with black patches around their muzzle, eyes, ears, legs and shoulders, is thought to provide them with camouflage in their habitat, dappled with light in the forest and often covered with snow, ice and rocks. Although their teddy-bear appearance is thought to be cute, the giant panda is a powerful and dangerous creature, and attacks on humans are not unheard of. Pandas are slow to reproduce, as litters usually only consist of one cub, which will stay with its mother for up three years after birth. In the wild, therefore, a female panda can only have new young once every two years at most. This slow breeding rate, combined with a seeming reluctance to reproduce in captivity, has contributed to the panda's precarious grip on existence in the face of human-related survival pressures: they are threatened by habitat loss caused by farming and forest clearance, which has driven them from the lowlands into the remote mountain regions they now inhabit. The giant panda is on the World Conservation Union's "Red List" of endangered animals, with as few as 1,600 left in the wild and about a tenth that number in zoos and breeding centres, mainly in China.