Giant pandas are carnivores, but 99% of their food consists of more than 20 kinds of bamboo plants growing in mountains and deep valleys.

As the seasons change, the bamboo species and parts of bamboo eaten in the diet of giant pandas also vary. The favorites are bamboo shoots. From spring to summer, they like several kinds of bamboos of the genus Qiong bamboo and Asparagus genus, as well as Bashan wood bamboo and walking stick bamboo.

It feeds on the bamboo shoots of Bamboo spp.

Bamboo shoots are new bamboo plants that grow from the underground stems of bamboo without branches and leaves. Their tissues are young and tender, and their water content is high. The nutritional content of bamboo shoots is 1.27% crude fat, 33.62% crude fiber, 10.32% crude protein, and 26.15% total sugar.

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Bamboo shoots are tender and juicy, good in palatability, easy to digest and absorb, and are a delicacy for giant pandas.

Every year from spring to autumn, in order to eat bamboo shoots of different species at different altitudes, giant pandas migrate from the middle mountains to the high mountains. This is called "shooting".

Looking at the whole bamboo, the nutrient content gradually increases from the lower part to the upper part of the bamboo plant.

Taking Lengjian bamboo as an example, the crude fat content of bamboo stems is 0.59%, bamboo branches are 3.37%, crude protein bamboo stems are 4.20%, bamboo leaves are 19.44%, crude fiber bamboo stems are 46.66%, and bamboo leaves are 24.27%.

It can be seen that although giant pandas prefer bamboo shoots, it makes sense that they often feed on bamboo leaves and the middle and upper bamboo stems of annual young bamboos.

Giant pandas living in the wild occasionally eat other plants, such as awnless wheat, corn, horsetail, green grass, porous mushrooms (xùn), wild angelica, Qiang Huo, young fir bark and dozens of other plants.

Even uncharacteristically, they pick up animal carcasses or capture smaller animals for food.

Giant pandas love to eat meat, especially mutton.