If there’s one animal that lives up to the saying you are what you eat it’s probably the giant panda nearly every aspect of a panda’s life revolves around bamboo [Music] giant pandas eat and eat and eat pandas can spend more than half of each day eating to understand why pandas eat so much you need to look more closely at what they eat bamboo a giant woody grass is a very poor nutritional source low in protein and high in fiber that pandas can’t digest well yet bamboo comprises 99 of a pandas diet to compensate pandas need to eat 20 to 40 pounds a day pandas have quite a bit in common with carnivores a panda’s digestive system is more closely related to that of a carnivore than an herbivore which explains why they don’t digest plants very well fortunately they have other adaptations that help them chow down on bamboo stocks including large powerful jaws [Music] when they’re not eating pandas rest and rest and poop and poop since they don’t digest bamboo very well pandas end up passing a lot of it as waste which unsurprisingly contains a lot of undigested bamboo bits pandas defecate more than 100 times a day producing more than 40 pounds of waste pandas even go number two while they’re napping and they spend a lot of time napping as a way to compensate for their low energy diet pandas have tiny cubs because of their poor diet baby giant pandas are born blind helpless and tiny weighing just five ounces or about one thousandth the size of their mom of all placental mammals panda cubs are the tiniest in comparison to their mother why so small the mother’s diet plays a role due to her low metabolism a panda mother has a relatively low blood oxygen level so the cub can get more oxygen outside the womb panda’s black and white fur may help them camouflage once again we can look at a panda’s diet to help understand why its fur is the color it is pandas don’t store enough fat to hibernate like other bears so they have to keep eating bamboo all year round and since they’re always roaming in search of bamboo pandas are unable to shed their fur quickly enough to match their background like other animals can so their black and white pattern may be sort of a compromise white fur allows them to blend into snowy backgrounds black fur allows them to blend into shady forest backgrounds historically pandas inhabited a much wider range than they do today and faced multiple predators so at the time they may have relied more on their camouflage ability today pandas are not at as high risk from predators but rather from a loss of bamboo the good news is that the giant pandas conservation status was recently upgraded from endangered to vulnerable an estimated 1850 pandas remain in the wild in china an increase of 17 over the past decade however pandas still face significant threats tied closely to their food source human development has driven pandas into isolated fragmented mountain regions restricting their access to bamboo additionally climate change threatens to eliminate more than a third of the bamboo habitat that pandas rely on by the end of the century [Music] you
