01 Forest of Life
The evolution of living species is like the existence of a spider web. When a species goes extinct, what left is an hollow point, and starting from this point, it will trigger the next extinction of other points ... What you can see is the extinction of a species; What you cannot see, perhaps, is the collapse of the whole ecosystem.
It is our luck that the evolutionary process of human beings and giant pandas are intertwined, so that we can live in the same world with them. Among the many species in the world, giant pandas have survived on the earth for more than 8 million years. Such a long evolutionary process has generated its unique genetic code.
At the eastern end of Hengduan Mountains, there is a long and narrow green corridor bounded between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. It is called the Giant Panda Corridor. The Giant Panda Corridor stretches across China’s Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. This corridor is also the only natural habitat of giant panda in the world.
Thanks to its rich and diverse biological environment, various kinds of creatures build their own homes in the Hengduan Mountains. Here, among the lofty mountains, the streams are deep, and human activities almost disappears, creating a tranquil haven for an ancient species like giant panda to live and survive.
The forest, standing at an altitude of about 2,000-3,700 meters, receives rich rainfall and is very humid.Bamboo forests are all over the place, with cloudy and foggy mist all year round. The temperature is below 20°C throughout the year. And it is this bamboo that serves as almost the only food source that can provide energy for giant pandas all year long.
02 Little Miracle
An adult giant panda weighs 90-130kg, while the average weight of a newborn giant panda cub is about 100g, which is one-thousandth of its mother’s weight. It is hard to imagine that such a "super tiny little" can gradually grow into a "super big man". In fact, whether it can grow into adulthood depends entirely on the care from its mother.
With eyes closed, unable to hear or see, only a weak sense of smell, this is what a giant panda cub looks like just after being born.
A newly born giant panda cub is not black and white, but all pink skin, with only a thin layer of fluff.
After 7 days, the skin around its eyes, ears, forelimbs, and shoulders begins to darken slightly, and the white fluff begins to thicken.
After more than 40 days, the giant panda cub gradually opens its eyes. This is its first "hello" to the world.
After more than 60 days, the cub can hear. After more than 90 days, the cub looks the same as the giant panda in our impression, and it begins to learn to walk.
After more than 120 days, the cub begins to roll, play, climb trees and learn to eat bamboo.
After about 180 days, it begins to gain weight rapidly, and as its body grows stronger, its range of activity increases. Like every life in nature, the cub is a miracle of nature. In the spring, the newly pregnant giant panda begins to hunt for food, and she constantly eats so as to acquire the necessary nutrients. During the first 5 months of pregnancy, she will eat bamboo shoots in the early spring, and then slowly start eating bamboo leaves. During this period, in order to make sure the cub in her womb can grow healthily, she eats a tremendous volume. Meanwhile, she will also seek sites for her den at higher altitude. Usually, she will make her den inside a hole at the bottom of a big tree, or under a huge rock, and there must be sufficient water sources and bamboo forests around. Once the location of her den is determined, she will find many bamboo joints, branches and leaves, and spread them at the bottom of the den. A cozy den with bamboo leaves and moss will surely be comfortable to her cub.
During the 14 days after the cub is born, the mother panda barely eats. She will keep the cub in her arms until it reaches one month old. If the cub feels hungry, thirsty, cold or hot, or if its mother is holding a little too tight, it will make different sounds to remind mother to take good care of cub.
03 Scenes from Childhood
For giant panda cubs, childhood is the most important and happiest time. During the year they spend with their mothers, they not only have to acquire various survival skills, but also accumulate some knowledge about the living environment around them. They will travel through many parts of the forest, sometimes sprinting on the hillsides, sometimes frolicking in the streams.
When a cub reaches about three months old, the mother will take it to the entrance of the den. At the beginning, the cub could not walk, and the mother would take her newborn cub for a walking lesson by the scruff of its neck.
When the cub is able to walk on its own, it will be quite curious about the surrounding environment. At this time, the mother begins to teach it the first lesson, tree climbing and food hunting. Sometimes it lingers on the hillside, plays a little, and then looks for mother by tracking her smell down the road. Sometimes, the mother will observe its action nearby. If the cub gets lost or the sign of her smell is lost, the cub will make a screeching cry, waiting for the mother to come back to it.
The branches are good places to avoid danger, teaches the mother panda. If the cub encounters danger, it can climb up a tree, hold its trunk firmly with the front paws, and climb hard with the hind paws.
Sometimes, the mother travels around with her cub. It needs to inspect the surrounding environment, and to collect information about where to find delicious food and clean water source.
The mother also teaches the cub to distinguish which bamboos are delicious and which ones are bad.
The giant panda is good at telling which bamboo tastes the best in each season, and which part of the bamboo is the most nutritious and palatable.
In summer, giant panda mothers will take their cubs to high altitudes to escape the heat wave; in winter, they will not hibernate, and their thick fur help them keep out the cold in snow when hunting for food.
When they were young, giant pandas are very naughty and lively. They enjoy sitting and sliding down the slope or on the snow. Some juvenile giant pandas would even go down the mountain and enter villages in winter, taking the villagers’ buckets and utensils out as toys, and throwing them away after playing to their heart’s content. Anything can be regarded as a toy in their eyes. After a full meal, they either play or take some sleep.
As the time goes by, the functions of various organs of the cub gradually improve. The black eye circles around its eyes have grown to 5cm, as if it is wearing a pair of sunglasses. It also has a pair of black ears that are large and round. Its eyes are small, and its vision is slightly worse than its hearing ability. The black ear is an adaptation to the cold environment. Such color can absorb heat energy, speed up blood circulation at the ear tip, and reduce heat loss. Giant pandas are more afraid of heat than cold, and they like to live in cool places.
During this year of its growth, the cub gradually increased its food intake and spent more time foraging each day. The short but substantial exercise in this year has given it a good opportunity to grow quickly. It is becoming stronger and bigger, and it’s time to go to see the world.
04 Home of My Own
For all living species, becoming a sub-adult means it’s time to leave your mom and start an independent life. An inner force begins to take shape, and that is the tendency to leave its mother. Like a migratory bird, when the time comes, it must set off and fly away.
A giant panda often feels hard to leave its childhood home. However, in order to avoid inbreeding and ensure the continuity of their reproduction, its mother has to drive her daughter out but keep her son nearby.
Each giant panda will have a home of 4 to 7 square kilometers. This is the area he chooses after having inspected many places. There needs to be lush bamboo forests, abundant food, streams and clear mountain springs around its home, and it should also be very quiet and secluded. Although it is a small world, it can sleep tight, find its love, and raise children. Building a home is very important for giant pandas.
The vast living space makes it not so difficult for giant pandas to find such a suitable area. The giant panda will leave its smell on the boundary of its home, which can avoid conflicts with other giant pandas. When a cub reaches two and a half years old, it will feel alienated by its mother. Sometimes the mother will even drive it away from home. Such behavior means that it should leave the area and find and establish its own home.
Even if it is forced to leave this area, it will continue to come back here, and even if it builds a new home, it will not be too far from here. No matter where it goes, the grown-up cub can still find its former home by its smell. Although this parting process seems cruel, it is also one of the reasons why giant pandas can survive for such a long time.
The fact that giant panda using a fixed area as its home reflects a kind of survival wisdom that prevails in its long-term evolution. Each giant panda guards one side of the land, which can not only adjust the density of the population, but also avoid food competition among giant pandas.
Such wisdom can only be gradually understood and learned by giant panda cubs after they have their own homes and families.
05 Rangers in Bamboo
Forest Everything in the world deserves our appreciation and respect, but the significance of the giant panda seems to have its own unique value. Its appearance is simple, honest and cute, and it is adorable; its character is mild and attracts attention; and in its long history of evolution, it has gradually evolved from the habit of "meat eating" to bamboo eating, avoiding causing damage to human or other animals when competing for food. This fully reflects the superb wisdom of this ancient creature. But these are not important to giant pandas. Living freely in the wild is their favorite thing.
They eat day and night, they don’t choose a specific place to sleep, and they don’t have a fixed place for excretion. They love to roam and do not have a fixed foraging place or resting place. They roam and forage in the bamboo sea and like to live freely. For most of the time, giant pandas live in dense mountains and forests, and they are like solitary wanderers and are hard to find.
An adult giant panda can weigh up to 90-130kg and stand about 1.7 meters tall. It looks huge and moves slowly. However, giant pandas are actually very flexible in their actions, whether they are foraging for food or climbing trees, they are masters. A giant panda can run at a speed of more than 40 kilometers per hour in the forest.
Born to climb
For giant pandas, big trees are not the only place to avoid danger, but also a place to rest, relax and play. They are well versed in climbing trees since childhood, and their joints are very flexible and can complete difficult movements like contortionists. When climbing a tree, their front limbs are attached to the trunk of the tree and slowly climb up until the hind limbs are fully stretched, and then climb onto the big tree. When descending from a tree, they keep their heads up, slowly back down, and then jump down agilely when close to the ground.
On the tree, they can breathe fresher air and enjoy the warm sunshine. They can also stand high on the tree and see what is happening below. Sometimes they stay in trees all day or even days, sleeping or sitting. When encountering their predators or chasing and playing with each other, they can also quickly climb onto high trees, and outrun their opponents.
The life on the tree is not affected by the size of their body. They can move freely on the tall, dazzling treetops, swaying, but not feeling afraid. Whenever it seems that they are about to fall from the tree, they deftly move on to the next one. When they want to sleep on the tree, they will pick up a comfortable branch, ride on it and sleep with their paws cuddling the tree, which is very comfortable and enjoyable.
A natural water lover
There is an old saying in China that the benevolent man enjoys the mountains, the wise man enjoys the water. And the giant panda living in the mountains and forests is like a retired wise man. Giant pandas can often be seen by the creeks in the dense forest or by the babbling springs.
For a giant panda to establish a living area, it must locate a water source within 800 meters. In order to find clean and tasty drinking water, it often travels long distances from high mountains to river valleys. Once it locates the water source, it will drink abundantly. Sometimes it will lie down by the water regardless of his posture, and drink enough in one breath. Then, it will start to play and play with its companions and have a lot of fun. In summer, it will take a bath in the water, and in winter, this place is nice for some cold swim.
Giant pandas can traverse in mountains and waters, cross turbulent rivers, and sprint into the distance upon danger. They are cumbersome yet flexible, simple yet clever, and they are the kind of animal that cannot be judged by their appearance.
The vegetarian way
Wild giant pandas can always enjoy a life that is guided by wisdom and delight. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, in order to get rid of competition with other carnivores, they chose a vegetarian path and began to eat bamboo as their main diet. And the price to pay is that they spend most of their lives eating.
A typical daily schedule for a giant panda:
0:00-2:00 break
2:00-7:00 eating (breakfast)
7:00-10:30 break
10:30-11:00 roaming and playing
11:00-12:00 eating (lunch)
12:00-14:30 break
14:30-21:00 eating (dinner)
21:00-2:00 break (night sleep).
Although the giant panda, which was originally carnivores, changed its eating habits, it did not change the absorption capacity of its stomach. The nutrition contained in bamboobased food is relatively low, and the absorption rate of panda’s digestive system is also low. Therefore, they can only change their living habits and continuously eat to meet the physiological needs.
Interestingly, even if giant pandas no longer eat meat, they care greatly about the taste of their food. When they eat bamboo, they will choose carefully, just like masters of bamboo tasting. No matter the season or geographical region, bamboo shoots are always their favorite. The shoots are very rich in water and nutrients, with the highest sugar content, making them sweet and very delicious to eat.
In spring, when new bamboo shoots emerge, giant pandas will enter the bamboo forest, feeding on them. In summer, they will turn to bamboo shoots that are one or two years old. In autumn, bamboo leaves become their favorite. And in winter, they tend to eat old bamboo shoots. Giant pandas are not only picky about the freshness of bamboo, but also care about location and species of bamboo. The bamboo species they like is located at an altitude of 1800-3200 meters.
After choosing their direction and location for feeding, the giant pandas will check the bamboo area by area, and then branch by branch. Typically, they will crawl in a zigzag or "8"-shaped route pattern, so as not to miss the best bamboo. When the food is ready, the panda finds an open space, sitting upright or lying down to eat.
Although they look slow, they are quite efficient when it comes to eating. There’s no extra movement in choosing, preparing and eating the food. The whole process is full of efficiency. They bite quickly, chew only if necessary, and often stretch out their front claws to grab the bamboo before the previous bite is swallowed. Their wrist bone, after a long period of adaptation and evolution, has also evolved into a finger that can hold the bamboo firmly.
The evolution of giant pandas is a complex process, with evolving habits leaving marks on their ever-distinctive characteristics. They have been making changes that are beneficial to their survival in the changing environment. The only thing that remains unchanged is their souls which are always free in the wild forests for eight million years.
06 Neighbor of Human
The best way to save a biological species is to preserve the integrity and stability of its population, as well as the genetic diversity within the population. Today, in terms of the protection of giant pandas, the most fundamental work we must finish is to preserve wildness and freedom of their populations.
The cuddly giant panda has evolved from stages like Ailuropoda microta, Ailuropoda milanoleuca daconi and finally takes on its modern look. It once bravely faced the sea and climbed mountains after mountains. It was once accompanied by the existence of the legendary saber-toothed tigers and sabertoothed elephants. And now, they become human being’s companions all the way through human evolution. It has become one of the most famous "living fossils" of the animal kingdom in the history of biological evolution.
Today, the giant panda is not only a rare species in China, its protection work has also become one of the demonstrations of the modern conservation of endangered species. The symbol of the giant panda has long been integrated with Chinese civilization and culture, and has become China’s "national treasures".
In the 1980s, many zoologists in China and around the world put the protection of giant pandas at the forefront. At the same time, many field researchers who have devoted themselves to the wilderness for decades, have also emerged to follow the trail of giant pandas. The places where giant pandas live are often in the deep mountains. They are very good at covering up their tracks. Therefore, the protection work of wild giant pandas is extremely difficult to carry out.
For China, giant pandas have both ecological and cultural values. For most of the workers who have devoted themselves to the protection of giant pandas whether these pandas can continue to reproduce and whether this population can continue to grow is what they really care about. Some of them have spent most of their lives, and some have even given their lives, but they still spare no effort to work for the conservation project for wild giant pandas.
To this day, the international community’s knowledge of giant pandas has reached an unprecedented level. From 1999 to 2003, China completed its third national general survey of giant pandas. In February 2015, the National Forestry Administration of the People’s Republic of China announced the results of the fourth national general survey of giant pandas. The result showed that compared with 1596 pandas of the third survey, China’s wild giant panda population reached 1,864. The population is growing steadily with a reasonable biological structure.
Meanwhile, we also have to see that the giant panda still faces many threats such as its overall population being too small, human disturbance, habitat fragmentation, diseases and natural predators. While maintaining the momentum of the protection and research work on their population and habitat, ex situ conservation has become a necessary supplement to in situ conservation. Scientists have successfully overcome the breeding challenges of captive giant pandas through unremitting efforts. At present, the population of captive giant pandas has reached more than 600. The genetic diversity of this population also continues to increase. At the same time, for ex situ conservation workers, releasing the captive giant pandas into the wild has been a long-held dream. Animals belong to nature, and the giant pandas that live freely in the mountains and forests are the real giant pandas. Since 2003, China has launched the "wild reintroduction" program of giant pandas. Up to now, 9 captive-bred giant pandas have been released into the wild and successfully welcomed by the wild population.
We and giant pandas live by the same river and drink the same water. Therefore, these conservation projects not only protect their habitats but also protect ourselves. The most spectacular and precious wildlife communities in the world are being formed in China’s mountainous areas like the Qinling Mountains, Minshan Mountains, Qionglai Mountains, Xiangling Mountains, and Liangshan Mountains. Animals such as giant pandas, takins, golden monkeys and other animals reproduce in these habitats and continue to thrive, making these lands full of vitality. From field tracking to habitat protection monitoring, from ex situ protection to wild release, our conservation effort has evolved from accumulating knowledge of giant pandas to actual panda breeding, and ultimately, we will make them a sustainable species in a complete, continuous and broader homeland.
In 2021, the opening of China’s Giant Panda National Park further enhanced the connectivity and integrity of the giant panda habitats, providing a better ecosystem for the survival and reproduction of giant pandas. This Park will also contribute a new model to the international community, showcasing China’s ecological conservation effort.