Ground Zero for this blog:
- Let the readers know about Giant Panda (features, history & issues)
- Give attention to all readers that Giant Panda need to prevent from become extinction
Monday, February 28, 2011
Introduction
Profile of Giant Panda
The giant panda weighs 75 - 160 kg (165 - 353 lb). It occupies Montane forests with dense stands of bamboo at altitudes of 2700 - 3900 m (8850 - 12,800') (although it may descend to as low as 800 m (2600') during winter). Cubs are born singly or in pairs, but the mother usually only raises one. The giant panda does not make a permanent den but takes shelter in hollow trees, rock crevices and caves. It is predominantly terrestrial but can climb trees well. Activity is largely crepuscular and nocturnal. It spends 10 - 12 hours a day feeding.
The giant panda does not hibernate but descends to lower elevations in the winter. The giant panda's diet consists mainly of bamboo shoots, up to 13 mm (1/2") in diameter, and bamboo roots. It also eats bulbs of plants such as iris and crocus, grasses and occasionally fish, insects and small rodents. Giant pandas are usually solitary, except during the mating season.
Giant panda populations have been declining for thousands of years due to hunting by humans and climatic changes. In ancient China it was already considered rare. It occurs in China's Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan (Kansu, Shensi and Szechwan) Provinces. Chinese research on the panda has revealed that reproduction in the wild is adequate and that the giant panda population has remained stable for 20 years.
Habitat loss is a major problem, with logging in panda habitat outside reserves now being the major threat. Other threats to the giant panda include poaching for its pelt; accidental death due to poaching for musk deer; and starvation due to the fragmentation of habitat, which causes pandas to be unable to reach alternative food sources when bamboo experiences its natural die-off.
The giant panda does not hibernate but descends to lower elevations in the winter. The giant panda's diet consists mainly of bamboo shoots, up to 13 mm (1/2") in diameter, and bamboo roots. It also eats bulbs of plants such as iris and crocus, grasses and occasionally fish, insects and small rodents. Giant pandas are usually solitary, except during the mating season.
Giant panda populations have been declining for thousands of years due to hunting by humans and climatic changes. In ancient China it was already considered rare. It occurs in China's Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan (Kansu, Shensi and Szechwan) Provinces. Chinese research on the panda has revealed that reproduction in the wild is adequate and that the giant panda population has remained stable for 20 years.
Habitat loss is a major problem, with logging in panda habitat outside reserves now being the major threat. Other threats to the giant panda include poaching for its pelt; accidental death due to poaching for musk deer; and starvation due to the fragmentation of habitat, which causes pandas to be unable to reach alternative food sources when bamboo experiences its natural die-off.
Types of Giant Panda
Hua Mei (born August 21, 1999), is a female giant panda. She is the first giant panda cub to survive to adulthood in the United States. She was born to Bai Yun (mother) and Shi Shi (father) at the San Diego Zoo
Mei Sheng (born on August 19, 2003) (Chinese: meaning: "Beautiful Life" or "Born in the USA") is a male giant panda born at the San Diego Zoo. He is the second panda to be born at the zoo and is the first offspring of Bai Yun and Gao Gao. He is the half brother of Hua Mei and the brother of Su
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND (WWF)
Why is this species important?
The panda’s habitat in the Yangtze Basin Eco region is shared by both pandas and millions of people who use the region's natural resources. This Eco region is the geographic and economic heart of China. It is also critical for biodiversity conservation. Its diverse habitats contain many rare, endemic and endangered flora and fauna, the best known being the giant panda.
Economic benefits derived from the Yangtze Basin include tourism, subsistence fisheries and agriculture, transport, hydro power and water resources. The survival of the panda and the protection of its habitat will ensure that people living in the region continue to reap ecosystem benefits for many generations.
Evolution of a symbol
When some of the world’s scientists and conservationists met in 1961 to plan how to publicize the threat to wildlife and wild places and to raise funds to support conservation projects, they decided to launch the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). They needed a symbol, and at the time Chi Chi, the only giant panda in the Western world, had won the hearts of all that saw her at the London Zoo in the United Kingdom. She was a rare animal, like her wild panda cousins in China, and her form and color were the ideal basis for an attractive symbol
WWF works to:
WWF has been active in giant panda conservation since 1980, and was the first international conservation organization to work in China at the Chinese government's invitation.
It is important to recognize that WWF and other NGOs are significant, but peripheral players in China. After many years of observation and practice it is clear that WWF’s main role in China is to assist and influence policy level conservation decisions through information collection, demonstration of conservation approaches at all levels and capacity building. In addition, WWF also serves as a facilitator; a source of information and a communicator in panda conservation.
Early panda conservation work included the first-ever intensive field studies of wild panda ecology and behavior. Current work focuses on the Minshan Mountains in Sichuan and Gansu provinces and the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi province. Specifically our work includes:
- Increasing the area of habitat under legal protection
- Creating green corridors to link isolated pandas
- Patrolling against poaching, illegal logging and encroachment
- Building local capacities for nature reserve management
- Continued research and monitoring
WWF has been helping the government of China to undertake its National Conservation Program for the giant panda and its habitat. This program has made significant progress. Reserves for the pandas cover more than 3.8 million acres of forest in and around their habitat.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Features of Giant Panda
Appearance
The adult panda, weighing about 200 to 300 pounds (90 to 140 kilograms), has a white heavy body, black legs, and a broad band of black across its shoulders. It has a massive round head, short snout, and small, round black ears. The panda has a white face with black patches around each eye. The panda usually grows to about 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 meters) in length, measures 4 and a half feet high, and has a short tail. They have plant grade feet, that is, both heel and toes make contact with the ground when walking, in a manner similar to humans.
Comparisons are being made between pandas and bears. In fact, some people called pandas "panda bears". If you look at a panda, you may think that it is a bear; however, there are differences in skull structure, teeth and behavior that eliminate it from the bear species.
Habitat
Pandas live in bamboo forests on upper mountain slopes of western and southwestern China. The size of their home range, when compared to the home ranges of bear species, is quite small. The panda's home range, in general, will vary from 3.8 to 6.5 square kilometers, or 1.5 to 2.5 square miles; it shares its range with other pandas. Female pandas tend to stay in smaller ranges than males do. The female's range is only about 30 to 40 hectares(75 to 100 acres), which is small in comparison with the male's range which is larger and overlaps the home ranges of several females.
Pandas are found in mixed deciduous and evergreen mountain temperate forests. In these forests are bamboo and rhododendron plants, which grow in altitudes between 3,000 and 10,000 feet. Pandas naturally live in the grassy lands of China, staying in rocky places and in hollowed out trees. In the winter, the panda finds shelter in bamboo thickets; they also eat the bamboo. When warmer summer weather arrives, the pandas move up higher into the cold mountains.
Pandas lived near farms and valleys, until the farmers cut down the bamboo for farmland. Pandas eat lots of bamboo, plants, shrubs, trees, and leaves. They usually like to live alone, but when in captivity, they have to live with other pandas. The zoo keepers try to make their home as much like their natural environment as possible, but pandas would rather live alone.
Behavior
Pandas spend most of their time by themselves. Most avoid direct contact with others of their own kind. At a stage in their life, pandas are forced to spend time with each other. In the spring, males and females must find each other in order to mate. In autumn, the females give birth to one cub which will live with her for the next 18 months or more.
Pandas usually avoid contact with each other in the wild. In their habitat, their coat helps make them conspicuous to each other, and prevents them from surprising one another by approaching too close to one another.
Pandas show their readiness to fight by lowering their heads to between their front legs, often hiding their eyes with their paws. This position is usually present in females during mating. Aggression is shown by a bark that would send an opponent scampering up the nearest tree.
Food Supply
Although the pandas will eat many different kinds of plants, 99% of their diet consists of bamboo leaves, stems, and shoots. Over fifteen different kinds of bamboo grow within the region. Pandas can be very picky eaters.
Pandas need a great deal of food to keep alive. They must eat great amounts of bamboo every day in order to get enough nutrition to survive. Every day they eat for 12 to 16 hours. Pandas will eat 10 to 18 kilograms ( 22 to 40 pounds) of bamboo leaves and stems each day. When consuming fresh bamboo shoots, their necessary intake rises to approximately 38 kilograms (84 pounds) every day. Occasionally, they catch and eat a small bird or mammal.
Life Cycle and Young
Female pandas do not normally mate until they are 5 to 7 years of age. Mating normally takes place in a manner similar to members of the dog family. Pandas breeding season takes place from March to May, then the baby pandas are born three to six months later, weighing only eighty-five to one hundred forty grams. The female panda gives birth once a year to one or two cubs. Panda cubs are very tiny, weighing only about 5 ounces (140 grams) at birth . Two cubs may be born from one mother at the same time, but only one will survive. The reason for this is because one baby panda alone requires a lot of care. Baby pandas grow in the first four to five years and usually stay with their mother for more than a year. They are blind when first born, but their eyes open after three weeks to a month. The mother panda usually spends about 12 hours per day feeding, staying with the cub 10 days without feeding herself. Panda cubs are extremely vulnerable while the mother is away feeding on bamboo.
Diet
Pandas eat bamboo. Since giant pandas have the digestive system of a carnivore, they do not have the ability to digest cellulose (plant matter) efficiently and thus derive little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. So, the average giant panda has to eat as much as 20 to 45 lbs (9-20 kg) of bamboo shoots a day. On occasion, giant pandas are also known to eat flowers, vines, tufted grasses, green corn, honey and rodents.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
History of Giant Panda
The giant panda is also known as the panda bear, bamboo bear, or in Chinese as Daxiongmao, the "large bear cat." The scientific name (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) means "black and white cat-footed animal."
The giant panda is believed to have made its first appearance during the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, perhaps no more than two to three million years ago. Panda fossils have been found in present day Burma, Vietnam, and particularly early in eastern China, as far north as Beijing. In the second century AD the giant panda was a rare and semi-divine animal inside China. In the Han dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) emperor's garden, in the then capital Xian, held nearly 40 rare animal species, of which the panda was the most highly treasured.
The Chinese poet Bai Juyi credited the panda with the mystical powers capable of warding off natural disasters and exorcising evil spirits. Panda skins appear scattered throughout Chinese imperial records, as gifts or tributes on great occasions of states. The giant panda was totally unknown outside the secretive "Middle Kingdom" until the declining Qing Dynasty was slowly forced to open its doors to trade and Christianity towards the end of the 19th century.
Scientists have debated for more than a century whether giant pandas belong to the bear family, the raccoon family, or a separate family of their own. This is because the giant panda and its cousin, the lesser or red panda (Ailurus Fulgens), share many characteristics with both bears and raccoons. Recent DNA analysis indicates that giant pandas are most definitely of the bear species although different enough to be put into its own sub family. The red pandas are more closely related to raccoons. Accordingly, giant pandas are categorized in the bear family (Ursidae) while red pandas are categorized in the raccoon family (Procyonidae).
The giant panda is believed to have made its first appearance during the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, perhaps no more than two to three million years ago. Panda fossils have been found in present day Burma, Vietnam, and particularly early in eastern China, as far north as Beijing. In the second century AD the giant panda was a rare and semi-divine animal inside China. In the Han dynasty (206 BC-24 AD) emperor's garden, in the then capital Xian, held nearly 40 rare animal species, of which the panda was the most highly treasured.
The Chinese poet Bai Juyi credited the panda with the mystical powers capable of warding off natural disasters and exorcising evil spirits. Panda skins appear scattered throughout Chinese imperial records, as gifts or tributes on great occasions of states. The giant panda was totally unknown outside the secretive "Middle Kingdom" until the declining Qing Dynasty was slowly forced to open its doors to trade and Christianity towards the end of the 19th century.
Scientists have debated for more than a century whether giant pandas belong to the bear family, the raccoon family, or a separate family of their own. This is because the giant panda and its cousin, the lesser or red panda (Ailurus Fulgens), share many characteristics with both bears and raccoons. Recent DNA analysis indicates that giant pandas are most definitely of the bear species although different enough to be put into its own sub family. The red pandas are more closely related to raccoons. Accordingly, giant pandas are categorized in the bear family (Ursidae) while red pandas are categorized in the raccoon family (Procyonidae).
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