Pandas are picky eaters. The conservation icons live off a nearly exclusive diet of bamboo. Now, researchers have shown that ancient pandas once had a much broader palette and lived in a wider region. The discovery overturns a long-held belief that while pandas descended from meat-eating animals, they have been dining on bamboo for millions of years.
“It has been widely accepted that giant pandas exclusively feed [on] bamboo [since] a long time ago — 2 millions years,” said Fuwen Wei, a wildlife ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who led the new research. Our results show the opposite, he added.
Pandas are distinctive. The giant mammals only live in the cool, high mountain forests of western China. And their black and white coats are as unique as their diet. To sustain their formidable size (the bears can grow up to 330 pounds), pandas pack away a ...
