Pandas
don't have to hunt very hard for their meals;
everywhere they go in the bamboo forest, they
are surrounded by food.
Giant
pandas sit down to eat, stripping away the hard, outer covering of
bamboo stalks with their teeth to get to the softer pith inside.
Pandas
have 'thumbs' that allow them to grab bamboo
stalks as tightly as a human would-they are one
of the few large animals to have such a tight grasp.
What
they eat.
When
they can get it, pandas will eat meat.
They
also like honey, grass, vines, roots,
and even flowers. But 99
percent of their diet is bamboo-and
a panda can eat more than 10,000 pounds of bamboo in a year.
Panda
teeth are wide and thick-about seven
times the size of human teeth-and their thick jawbones
and huge cheek muscles can close with tremendous force.
How
they multiply.
Panda
mothers are about 900 times bigger than their
four-ounce newborn babies.
Blind
and helpless at first, the baby is protected by its mother
from predators like leopards and wild dogs.
When
it is old enough to leave the den, the mother carries it in her teeth,
just as a cat would, and by seven
months of age, the young panda is romping on its own, scampering around
and climbing trees. It will remain with its mother until
it is about 18 months old and weighs about 120 pounds.
Where
they live.
Thousands
of years ago, pandas and the bamboo they eat were
found all over western China.
Today,
primarily because of changes in climate that affect bamboo, pandas
are found in much smaller, more isolated
areas.
The
mountains where they live may get more than 50 inches of rain
and snow every year-an excellent
climate for bamboo, and so for pandas as well.
