I’m not quite sure how the topic came up, but a few days ago I had a discussion with my friends and I came to a startling realisation: the giant panda is the worst-designed animal on the planet. Now you might be shocked by this statement. How could I possibly conclude that this delightful, furry creature is anything but perfect? For crying out loud, it’s so darn irresistible that they even put it on the logo for the World Wildlife Fund! But for an animal to appear on the WWF logo, it also has to be endangered. So the logical question is, why is the giant panda the second most threatened species in the world? Why are there barely 1000 pandas living in the wild? Why should we put so much time and effort into saving the panda when it won’t even take a crack at saving itself? You may think that I’m being a little harsh, but I’ve got the facts to back me up.
The panda was actually designed to be a carnivore, but it was so pathetic at being a carnivore that it became a vegetarian. Any animal that chooses to be a vegetarian even though it is designed to eat meat is a disgrace to its species. This is not my opinion, it is science. And because the panda is not designed to be a vegetarian, it is unable to digest cellulose… one of the main ingredients in the panda’s favourite dish: bamboo. So the panda spends up to 16 hours a day eating, because it is only able to digest about 20% of what it eats. And what does it do during its eight hours of free time? Does it make passionate love to its panda-lover, thereby ensuring survival of the species? Does it live up to its adorable reputation by being adorable? Au contraire. It sleeps.
Now here’s my favourite newly-acquired panda fact: the panda excretes up to 40kg of waste a day. You heard me. Forty. That is almost as much as I weigh. Wouldn’t it just make the most wonderful pet? I’m thinking quite seriously about trading my dog in for one. Apparently there is even talk of using panda poo to make paper, due to the large quantity of undigested cellulose that it contains. Mmm…
When it comes to ensuring survival of the species, pandas aren’t really doing a bang-up job (excuse the pun). They breed once a year and the female is only fertile for 24-36 hours, which one might call a very small window of opportunity. If, by some miracle, the female conceives, litters of one to two cubs are born. Now you are probably thinking, “Have I ever seen a panda with two cubs?” The answer you are looking for is a resounding, “No.” You see, if (again, by some miracle) two cubs are actually born, the mother abandons the weaker cub and leaves it to die. Ah, nature. Isn’t she amazing?
Although death by abandonment is common, cubs are also susceptible to illness and other predators, besides their own mothers. Cubs are born blind and remain so for 45 days. Wow. Talk about adapted for survival. During this vulnerable time, mothers sometimes leave the den for three to four hours to feed (due to their poorly adapted digestive systems). Great. So imagine for a second a blind, hairless, rat-like, baby panda which weighs approximately 100g. Now imagine that panda alone in a clearing for four hours. Now imagine that you are a leopard…
You might be thinking that breeding pandas in captivity should eliminate some of the dangers that cubs face in the wild. The first problem with this statement is that it assumes that pandas know how to breed. Many males in captivity appear uninterested in mating or do not even seem to know how to do so. Apparently Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, the first pair of pandas to live in the USA, tried to mate (without success) for nearly 10 years. When they finally got it right they had five cubs, none of which survived to adulthood.
My final panda-fact for the day: Female pandas may show signs of fake pregnancy, which is impossible to distinguish from real pregnancy because vets can seldom locate a foetus via ultrasound. Scientists call this pseudopregnancy, but I prefer to think that the females fake pregnancy deliberately because it is the closest they’re ever going to get to having a real baby.
The giant panda, multi-tasking.
Evolutionarily speaking, having a fake-pregnancy adaptation is the best way to condition males not to seek mating.