Scien&sts

Study Panda Poo

It may all be all a load of poo, but scien0sts say panda excrement could hold the key to developing new
biofuels.
Belgian researchers are examining giant panda faeces to try to understand how they can digest tough
bamboo. They're hoping for clues on how to develop new genera0ons of biofuel.
While the gene0c make-up of endangered pandas is carnivorous, the animals have adapted to a diet
consis0ng almost exclusively of bamboo.
"So it's a huge feat for this animal to digest something as hard. And also, they only eat certain parts of
bamboo. They give them 30 kilograms of bamboo every day, and they eat maybe 10 kilograms.
So if I have a piece of bamboo, you'll see certain parts are eaten and others are not, and we don't
understand very well why.
Researchers plan to study microorganisms in the animal's gut, before turning their aJen0on to its diges0ve
tracts.
"So the prime reason we take the poo is we know that it's the bugs, the microorganisms living in the panda
that digest all that tough food.
So we're going to take the excrement, we're going to put that in the reactors and see how the diges0on
works.
According to the team composed of Belgian, Italian and Chinese scien0sts, the toughness of bamboo stalks
could be poten0ally helpful for studying the processing of brous material.
The results may point to new, cheaper, ways to produce so-called second genera0on biofuels made from
plants and biomass.

(poo) (poo) (to change food into energy which your body can use) (a piece of information) (meat-eating) (very big) (an impressive achievement) (the tube through which food passes from your stomach) (a microorganism, a bacterium) (a long narrow part of a plant that supports leaves) (energy from plants) -