Giant pandas spend half of their time eating every day, and most of the remaining half of their time is spent in sleep. In the wild, giant pandas sleep for 2 to 4 hours between every two meals. Lying flat, on their sides, prone, stretched or curled up are their preferred sleeping methods. In the zoo, keepers feed them regularly twice a day, so the giant pandas spend the rest of their time resting. Giant pandas look cute even when sleeping. They are very flexible and can put their bulky bodies into a variety of positions. My favorite position is to put my legs up on a tree and cover my eyes with my hands. The most adorable features of the giant panda are its chubby body and the slow, piggy-back way it walks. This is because they live in an environment where there is plenty of food and no natural predators, so there is no need to move quickly. But it's this slow movement that allows it to conserve energy and adapt to low-energy foods. They sometimes climb trees to scout out situations, escape intruders, or take a nap. Giant pandas are good at climbing trees and love to play. The behavior of climbing trees is generally a way for the weak to avoid the strong when the marriage proposal is approaching, or to escape danger, or when they meet each other. Pandas sometimes go down to valleys and enter mountain villages or houses. They treat pots, pots, buckets, especially round utensils as toys, and then abandon them in the mountains after playing with them. Sometimes they also become friendly with domesticated livestock such as sheep and pigs, eating and living together. Under normal circumstances, giant pandas always have a very docile temperament. When meeting people for the first time, they often cover their faces with their front paws or lower their heads to hide their true appearance. They rarely actively attack other animals or people, and always avoid them when encountering them in the wild. But once she becomes a mother, her little baby is sacred and inviolable. Even if she cares about her, she will be angry and angry, showing her teeth and claws, and moving her hands and feet. Sometimes they also like to do some grooming and other fitness activities. You can straighten your body like a cat, with the front stretched out and the back half lifted to allow the body to stretch flexibly. Or after waking up, the forelimbs can be stretched straight to yawn. If you get wet with water or after wading in a river, you can shake off the water like a dog. In the wild, giant pandas often conflict during the estrus season, especially when three to four males pursue a female in estrus. Sometimes, females and males also fight. In zoos, their fights are usually over water, food or one panda claiming good territory. Visible signals are meaningless to giant pandas: their round faces lack expression, their tails are short and have no crest or brown fur to spread out, and their ears can be raised and lowered but are not flexible enough. This is all caused by the fact that pandas live in dense mist-filled bamboo forests on high mountains all year round and cannot see each other. Giant pandas communicate most through scent marks left in their habitat. When they want to meet, usually during estrus, they find each other by scent marking. Once they meet, they switch to vocal communication. Giant pandas rely on their rich "language" to express emotions from amorous to angry. Silence is another form of communication. When giant pandas are playing or simply expressing friendship and have no thoughts of mating or aggression, they do not make any sounds. This sound rule can help people judge the behavior of most pandas seen in zoos. Marking territory with scent is their secret to staying peaceful in the bamboo forest. Giant pandas smear the secretions of their perianal glands on pillars, tree stumps, walls, the ground and places they often pass by. These scent marks allow them to avoid each other or come together. During the non-estrus season, they will walk away as soon as they smell the scent of a strange panda. During the estrus season, a female giant panda's scent may indicate that she is ready to mate and hopes to attract males. Giant pandas have several ways of marking themselves. They are often marked with urine, or a mixture of urine and perianal gland secretions. When they mark, they shake their heads and half-open their mouths. After marking, they will peel off the bark or leave scratch marks at the marked place to attract the attention of other pandas. The giant panda’s eating habits are one of its most peculiar and interesting habits, because it almost entirely depends on eating bamboo. Among the more than 50 kinds of plants naturally foraged in the wild, bamboo accounts for more than half and accounts for the annual food supply. 99% of them, among which the 7 most favorite species include Dendrobium japonicus and Dendrobium sinensis. Although with the change in food habits, some organs have also undergone corresponding changes, especially the teeth. Its molars are very developed and are the most powerful among carnivores. The structure is relatively complex, close to omnivorous beasts, and the cleft teeth are The differentiation is not obvious, the canines and premolars are well developed, and there is no alveolar space. The upper incisors are arranged in an arc, the lower incisors are in a horizontal row, and the second pair of lower incisors are often positioned far back, seemingly forming a double row. This phenomenon is more obvious in the skulls of older individuals. The roots of the canine teeth are thick, the crowns are short, and the tips are not sharp. The first pair of premolars are very small, and are often missing on one or both sides. The front edges of the second pair of upper premolars are biased inward, and the rear edges are biased outwards, in a semi-oblique position. The third and fourth pairs of upper premolars are The tooth crown is prismatic, with 3 denticles on the outside and 2 on the inside. Molars are called papilloma-shaped teeth. Their chewing surfaces are very wide and roughly rectangular. They have nodular cusps of different sizes. The upper molars have 4 larger cusps. The last upper molar is extra large and extends backward. The posterior part of the zygomatic bone has a complex small prismatic tooth process on the coronal surface. The last lower molar is small and has an inconspicuous tip, located on the inner side of the front edge of the mandibular ramus.
In general, the last upper molar of carnivores is located at the front edge of the base of the coronoid process. The backward movement of the giant panda's molars can limit the left and right swing of the upper and lower molars and enhance the chewing effect, but the grinding effect is limited. . The wear of molars is different up and down. The wear of lower molars starts from the outside, while the wear of upper molars starts from the inside. The reason is that the distance between the left and right upper molar rows is greater than the distance between the lower jaw molar rows. Overall, its teeth are different from those of other carnivores, but very similar to those of herbivorous ungulates. The five clawed toes on its forefoot are parallel, and there is also a sixth digit, which is a powerful sesamoid bone that grows from the wrist bone and plays the role of a "thumb". It can be used with the other 5 fingers to hold bamboo well, even grab things, climb trees, etc. But it still retains the relatively simple digestive tract of carnivores. It does not have the complex stomach and huge cecum specially used to store food that herbivores have, and the intestines and stomach are not used to process cellulose from plants. Fermented bacteria or ciliates produce nutrients that can be absorbed. In order to get the nutrients you need, the only way is to eat and drink as fast as you can. An adult giant panda weighing 100 kilograms will spend 12 to 16 hours a day in spring, eating 10 to 18 kilograms of bamboo leaves and bamboo stalks, or 30 to 38 kilograms of fresh bamboo shoots, and excrete more than 10 kilograms of feces at the same time. Maintain metabolic balance. The food of giant pandas is low in nutrition and cannot store too much energy. In order to conserve energy, activities that consume too much energy must be controlled. Therefore, it likes to walk on gentle terrain and avoid climbing hills. They usually only move in a small area, using smells, sounds, etc. to transmit information, without direct contact with each other. In addition to eating bamboo, giant pandas also eat some weeds and other plants, but the amount they eat is very small. In addition, it is not a real "monk". When it encounters an opportunity, it also wants to eat "meat" to restore the nature of its ancestors. For example, there is a pest rat distributed in its habitat, called the bamboo rat, commonly known as "bamboo rat", which specializes in eating the underground roots of arrow bamboo, causing it to wither. But its meat is tender, delicious and nutritious, just like a local saying goes: "Turtle doves in the sky, bamboo slips on the ground." Giant pandas have an ingenious way to deal with bamboo rats. Once they smell its scent or find its traces, they can quickly find its cave, then blow into the hole with their mouths, and slap hard with their front paws to force the bamboo rats. The rat fled in a hurry, but the giant panda took the opportunity to jump up, hold it down with its front paws, tear off the rat's skin, and eat all its meat. If the bamboo rat does not come out of its hole, the giant panda will dig holes and ransack the house until it is captured. Although the giant panda also has the potential to eat meat as a carnivore, it rarely preys on animals or animal carcasses. This is not because it does not like eating meat, but because it lacks opportunities. Because there are very few large carnivores in the giant panda's distribution area, there are not many carcasses left for the giant panda to eat. If it often catches mice and other small animals, the nutrients it receives are often not enough to compensate for the energy it consumes. Therefore, giant pandas can only occasionally eat a little meat, and most of the time they rely on bamboo to sustain their lives. They have become animals that follow the rules and rely on bamboo throughout their lives. 99% of the food of giant pandas is bamboo. There are more than 60 species of bamboo plants in 12 genera that can be eaten by giant pandas. In addition, wild giant pandas occasionally eat some animal carcasses or other plants. Captive giant pandas mainly feed on one or several types of low-mountain bamboos, and their supplementary food is concentrated feed made mainly from cereals. Bamboo is the key to the growth, development, health and normal reproduction of giant pandas. With the improvement of giant panda breeding technology, it is gradually recognized that the alpine or sub-alpine bamboos that provide giant pandas' favorite food play an important role in their health and normal breeding; coupled with the improvement of transportation conditions. Under captive conditions, giant pandas can also be artificially provided with a large amount of alpine or sub-alpine bamboos. The food of giant pandas is not just arrow bamboo. In fact, giant pandas like to eat many types of bamboo, and arrow bamboo is just one of the more common types. These bamboos have long been growing under the canopy of subalpine dark coniferous forests, mountain dark coniferous forests, mountainous mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests, and mountainous evergreen broad-leaved forests, at altitudes ranging from 700 to 3,500 meters. Giant pandas in different mountain systems have different staple foods of bamboo. The diet of giant pandas changes with the mountains and seasons. They eat different types of bamboo or different parts of the same type of bamboo in different seasons. In spring and summer, they like to eat different kinds of bamboo shoots. In autumn, bamboo leaves are the main food, and in winter, bamboo stalks are the main food. Common edible bamboo species for giant pandas in the wild include: cold arrow bamboo, August bamboo, solid bamboo, Qiong bamboo, large-leaf Qiong bamboo, Ruo bamboo, few-flowered arrow bamboo, short-cone Yushan bamboo, Beibei Yushan bamboo, Ere bamboo, Bashan bamboo Wood bamboo, rough-flowered arrow bamboo, missing-bract arrow bamboo, Chinese orange bamboo, etc. The commonly used edible bamboo species for captive giant pandas include Bashan wood bamboo, spiny bamboo, white bamboo, Ruoye bamboo, light bamboo, bitter bamboo, broad-leaf Ruo bamboo, moso bamboo, also known as Mengzong bamboo, cold arrow bamboo, walking stick bamboo, arrow bamboo, and March bamboo shoots. , square bamboo shoots, etc. In addition to mainly eating bamboo, captive giant pandas can also obtain a small amount of concentrated feed, fruits, and vitamin and trace element additives. This is mainly because giant pandas cannot eat freely in captivity, and their nutritional intake is insufficient or unbalanced. Therefore, additions and replenishments are made manually. The main raw materials of concentrated feed include corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, etc. After these raw materials are cleaned, they are processed according to a certain ratio and processed with special techniques to become food for giant pandas. All food for giant pandas has strict selection standards and must undergo safety and nutritional testing before use.
Only food that meets the requirements can be finally provided to the giant pandas. Giant pandas spend nearly half of their time eating every day. The digestive tract of the giant panda retains the characteristics of its ancestors and is similar to that of carnivores, such as a relatively short digestive tract, sharp canine teeth, a single-chambered stomach, the absence of a cecum, relatively sharp claws and well-developed meat pads. In the process of slow evolution, it gradually evolved to eat high-fiber bamboo as its main food, and evolved some structural features to adapt to living on bamboo, such as the masseter muscle, the tooth crown and the tooth process, and the front paws evolved in addition to five toes. A dummy thumb is formed to form a dual grip structure to facilitate holding bamboo. Giant pandas spend most of their time on their hands and knees collecting, preparing and eating food. They don't care where they are - sitting, lying down, leaning on their sides - they just keep peeling off bamboo stalks and eating bamboo leaves. 99% of the giant panda's food is bamboo, and sometimes it may be some wild flowers, vines, weeds, honey, and even some meat. Giant pandas mainly eat bamboo and also like to drink water. Most giant pandas' homes are located near streams and flowing water, so they can drink from clear springs nearby. Giant pandas drink water at least once a day. Although there is abundant food in some places, it is difficult to find giant pandas without water. In winter, when the mountain water is frozen by ice, some giant pandas may also be nostalgic for the hidden conditions and food base of their homeland and may even travel long distances, down ditches, to drink water in the valley, and then return home. Giant pandas always seek water as close as possible and walk out on an obvious drinking path day after day. When they come to the stream, they drink by licking and sucking. If the stream is thinly iced or filled with gravel, they break the ice with their forepaws or dig a shallow pit of about 25 x 20 meters with their claws to lick and drink. Giant pandas take bamboo as their main food, but bamboo is difficult to digest and absorb. As a result, the giant panda's energy intake is greatly restricted, and all its activities must take into account taking in as much energy as possible and consuming as little energy as possible. With changes in climate and food distribution, giant pandas have the habit of vertical migration. In summer, they move up the mountains to hunt for bamboo shoots, and in autumn and winter, they move down to mid- and low-mountain areas where the snow is covering the mountains. Giant pandas have a low digestion and utilization rate of bamboo, and the food stays in the body for a short time. Therefore, they eat a large amount and excrete it quickly to obtain enough energy to meet their needs. According to the different parts of bamboo that giant pandas eat in different seasons, their daily food intake is roughly as follows: 23 to 40 kilograms of bamboo shoots; 10 to 18 kilograms of bamboo leaves; and 17 kilograms of bamboo stalks. Giant pandas are very intelligent animals, which is reflected in their excellent feeding strategies. They not only select the bamboo species with the best nutritional value in the region, but also give priority to the parts with the highest nutritional value. The order of eating is bamboo shoots, young bamboo, and bamboo stalks.