Giant pandas live almost entirely by eating bamboo. Among more than 5 plants naturally ingested in the wild, bamboo accounts for more than half, and accounts for 99% of the annual food intake, among which seven species like Fargesia gigantea and Fargesia gigantea are their favorite foods.

An adult giant panda weighing 1 kilograms spends 12-16 hours a day in spring, eating 1-18 kilograms of bamboo leaves and stalks, or 3-38 kilograms of fresh bamboo shoots, and discharging more than 1 kilograms of feces at the same time, so as to maintain the balance of metabolism.

Although the giant panda also has the potential for carnivores to eat meat, it rarely preys on animals or animal carcasses. This is not because it doesn't like eating meat, but because it lacks opportunities. Because there are few large carnivores in the distribution area of giant pandas, there are not many residual corpses left for them to eat.

if it often catches small animals such as mice, the nutrition it gets is often not enough to compensate for the energy it consumes. Therefore, giant pandas can only eat a little meat occasionally, and most of the time they rely on bamboo to maintain their lives step by step, becoming animals that follow the rules and live by bamboo all their lives.

Extended information

Bamboo is the main food for giant pandas, but giant pandas will eat a large number of three different bamboo foods, namely bamboo stems, bamboo leaves and bamboo shoots, in a certain period of time. The nutritional components of three kinds of bamboo foods are quite different.

1. Bamboo shoots are the panda's favorite food. After eating a lot of bamboo shoots, the weight of giant pandas increased significantly. Blood analysis showed that the high protein level in bamboo shoots led to the increase of serum urea nitrogen level and protein metabolism related indicators in giant pandas.

2. The fat content of bamboo leaves is relatively high, and the blood fat level of giant pandas increases significantly after eating a lot. However, the digestion rate of fat in bamboo leaves of giant pandas is very low, and the efficiency of fat digestion and utilization is also low.

3. Bamboo stems have the highest energy intake, but the weight of giant pandas shows negative growth during the period of eating bamboo stems. However, because the fiber content of bamboo stems is too high, and the process of digesting fiber needs more energy, the body is in a negative energy balance state, which leads to the negative weight growth of giant pandas during eating bamboo stems.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Giant Panda