2008

project on red panda

abin rimal
little flower school
abin_rimal2000@yahoo.com
12/4/2008
  Red Panda
Red Panda, common name for a raccoonlike animal, similar in size to a large cat, with thick, reddish-
brown fur. The red panda has pointed ears, stout limbs, and plantigrade feet (heel and toe touching
the ground) with partly retractile claws and woolly soles. Like the giant panda, the red panda has a
sixth digit near the wrist that aids the animal in eating. The long, bushy tail has rings of red and
yellow. Red pandas are found on steep mountains in western China and in the Tibetan Himalayas.
They live in pairs and small groups in bamboo forests, on which they feed. They are nocturnal,
sleeping in trees during the day. Breeding takes place from January to March, and the young are born
three to five months later. The litter may include one to four, but most commonly two, offspring. In the
past the red panda has been classified in the raccoon family and the bear family. More recently some
scientists place the red panda in the family Ailuridae, which is separate from both the raccoon and
bear families.

Scientific classification: The red panda belongs to family Ailuridae in the order Carnivora. It is
classified as Ailurus fulgens.
Red Panda
The red panda lives in the bamboo thickets and woodlands of western China and in the Tibetan Himalayas. Its red
fur, white face markings, white ears, and ringed tail make this mammal look like a large fox.
Kenneth W. Fink/Bruce Coleman, Inc

Bear
I INTRODUCTION

Bear, any of a group of mammals distinguished by a large, stocky body; powerful limbs; dense fur; and
a short, stumpy tail. Bears live in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, where they occupy
a wide range of habitats, including mountain, forest, and Arctic wilderness. Over the last century bear
populations have steadily declined as humans have overhunted bears and encroached on their habitat.
Brown Bear with Fish
Despite the considerable fragmentation of its range, the brown bear, Ursus arctos, is still the most widespread
member of its family. It persists in scattered pockets from Spain to Japan and in the northern Rocky Mountains of
the United States. Populations are more continuous in Russia, Alaska, and Canada. This broad range encompasses
much variation, from enormous coastal brown bears in Alaska and Kamchatka to much smaller bears in Southern
Europe, where large, dangerous individuals (and their genes) were eliminated long ago. There are pale cream
brown bears and almost black brown bears. Because of their frosted coats, brown bears of the North American
interior are universally called grizzlies.
Johnny Johnson/Animals Animals

Zoologists (scientists who study animals) classify eight species of bears: giant panda, spectacled bear,
sun bear, sloth bear, Asiatic black bear, American black bear, brown bear, and polar bear. All of these
species, with the exception of some populations of spectacled bears and sun bears, live north of the
equator. Bears are not currently found in Africa, Australia, or Antarctica. All bears share a similar
anatomy, but individual species vary in size, diet, and type of habitat. For example, polar bears live in
frozen Arctic wilderness, where they feed primarily on seals, while sun bears live in Asian rain forests
and dine on insects, fruits, nuts, and small animals. Reaching weights of 800 kg (1,760 lb), polar bears
may grow 12 times larger than their smaller cousins the sun bears, which rarely exceed 66 kg (146 lb)
in weight.

Bears have long fascinated humans. Ancient cave art and more recent paintings and sculpture
illustrate the fear as well as admiration with which people regard the awesome power and acute
intelligence of bears. In fairy tales, bears are the symbolic image of brave deeds. In folk literature, the
bear’s habit of disappearing in winter months and emerging in spring evokes a theme of spiritual
renewal, the replenishment of food, and the return of prosperity. In modern times, as the recreational
use of parks and wilderness areas has grown dramatically, humans have experienced increased
contact with bears. Bear attacks on humans are rare, however. American black bears killed fewer than
40 people during the 20th century. Grizzly bears, a type of brown bear, are more dangerous, but
attacks on humans are still rare. In United States national parks that are home to grizzlies, injury rates
from grizzly bears are about one person per 2 million visitors. Bears prefer to avoid humans, but when
attacks do occur, they are usually the result of humans surprising these nervous, shy, and easily
frightened animals.

II PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Bears are bulky animals with wide shoulders, a short back, short and thick legs, broad paws, and a
short tail. They have an elongated head, rounded ears that stand straight up, small eyes, and a long
snout. Bears hunt for food using an acute sense of hearing and an extremely keen sense of smell—
some can detect odors from more than a mile away. Bear eyesight is probably similar in acuity
(sharpness) to human vision. Black bears, and likely other bears, have color vision, which helps them
identify ripe fruits and nuts.

Bears have 32 to 42 teeth, depending on the species, and these teeth reflect a varied diet of both
plants and animals. Although all bears are members of the order Carnivora and are meat eaters, all
but polar bears have become omnivorous—that is, they eat many types of foods, including lichens,
roots, nuts, fruits, berries, seaweed, grasses, honey, grubs, caterpillars, and ants. Bear teeth are not as
sharp or specialized for shearing meat as are those of some other carnivores, such as cats. For
instance, canine teeth in most carnivores are generally large and pointed and are used for killing prey.
In bears, however, these teeth are relatively small, and bears typically use them more to defend
themselves or as tools. The molar teeth of bears are broad and flat, adapted to shredding and grinding
plant food into small, easily digested pieces.

Bears have four limbs that end in paws. Each paw has five long, sharp claws that are unretractile—
unlike cats, bears are not able to retract their claws. Depending on the species, these claws may be
used to climb trees, rip open termite nests and beehives, dig up roots, or catch prey. Bears walk
differently than most carnivores, which tend to walk on their toes in a way that is adapted for speed.
Like humans, bears have a plantigrade stance, walking with their weight on the soles of their hindfeet,
with the heel touching the ground, while the toes of the forefeet are used more for balance. This
distribution of weight toward the hindfeet gives bears a lumbering gait. Although bears are slower than
most other carnivores, such as lions and wolves, a running bear can still reach speeds of 50 km/h (30
mph). Bears are far stronger than other carnivores, and their limbs are more flexible and agile.

Bear fur is long and shaggy. Fur color varies among species, ranging from all white, blonde, or cream
to black and white to all black or all brown. Fur color may also vary within a species. American black
bears, for instance, may be black, brown, reddish-brown, or bluish-black. Several species, such as the
sun bear and spectacled bear, have lighter-colored chest and facial markings.

Males are larger than females in all bear species, but the difference between the sexes varies and is
greatest in the largest species. Huge male polar bears may weigh twice as much as female polar
bears, while smaller male and female sun bears are similar in weight.

The life span of bears is not well known. The range seems to be about 25 to 40 years. Bears in the wild
tend to die at a younger age than do their counterparts in zoos.
III TYPES OF BEARS

Bears
Discovery Enterprises, LLC

The bear family includes eight species, each showing remarkable variation in physical features and
habits. Some scientists believe that bears and animals in the raccoon family share a common ancestor
and are more closely related to each other than to other carnivores. Other scientists believe that bears
are more closely related to walruses and sea lions. In the past, zoologists placed the giant panda in the
raccoon family, but recent analysis of the giant panda’s genetic makeup and fossil evidence have
convincingly established the giant panda as a member of the bear family.

A Giant Panda

Giant Panda
Giant pandas were once believed to be more closely related to raccoons than bears, but molecular analysis
conducted in the mid-1980s suggests that giant pandas are more appropriately grouped with the true bears. Giant
pandas are found in the higher elevations of western China and the Tibetan Himalayas, where bamboo, the staple
of their diet, is prolific. This giant panda uses a special bone at the base of its forefoot to grasp bamboo shoots.
Art Wolfe/ALLSTOCK, INC.

Possibly the world’s best-known wild animal, the giant panda has a round body, a bullet-like head with
small ears, and a short, stumpy tail. Its shaggy coat is white with a black patch around each eye and a
ring of black around the shoulders, front legs, and chest. The giant panda can reach a length of 1.5 m
(5 ft) and weigh 100 kg (220 lb).

The giant panda has the smallest range and smallest population of all the bears. Only about 1,000
individuals live in bamboo forests in the mountains of south-central China. Bamboo makes up about 99
percent of the giant panda’s diet, and the bear spends 12 to 14 hours each day eating up to 18 kg (40
lb) of bamboo leaves and stems or 39 kg (85 lb) of shoots. The giant panda brings food to its mouth
with its front paws, using a long wrist bone that works like a thumb to grasp bamboo stems. Despite
their cute, cuddly appearance, giant pandas can be provoked to aggressive defensive behavior.

With such a small population, a narrow habitat range, and a highly specialized diet, giant pandas are
widely considered in great danger of extinction. They are classified as endangered species on both the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species List and the Red List of Threatened
Species compiled by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), a nongovernmental organization that
compiles global information on endangered species. These classifications offer these animals
protection and provide opportunities for conservation management, including strictly enforced
protection from hunting in their habitats. The Chinese government, as well as many private
organizations and zoos around the world, support conservation activities that encourage local people
to protect the giant panda and its habitat. A number of programs sponsored by zoos or other breeding
centers have attempted to breed giant pandas in captivity, although most of these programs have
proved unsuccessful. Among the difficulties faced by captive breeders has been the problem of
encouraging a female giant panda to mate with a selected male during the two to three days of the
year when she is most fertile, a period known as estrus.

B Spectacled Bear
Spectacled Bear
Named for its banded face, this dark-haired bear is the only bear of South America. It lives in two isolated
populations on the slopes of the central Andes Mountains, where it feeds on wild fruits, leaves, grasses, small
animals, and insects.
Mark Moffett/Minden Pictures

Creamy-white rings surrounding the eyes give the spectacled bear its name. Its shaggy coat of black
or dark brown is marked by white or yellow coloring on the muzzle and in a roughly shaped circle on
the chest. Also known as the Andean bear, it is the only bear native to South America, where it lives on
the forested slopes of the Andes Mountains from western Venezuela and Colombia south to Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia.

Spectacled bears grow to a length of about 1.8 m (about 6 ft) and weigh 62 to 154 kg (137 to 340 lb);
the males are much larger than the females. Spectacled bears eat diverse foods, including small
mammals and birds, grasses, fruits and berries, and parts of bromeliads (plants such as pineapple),
orchid bulbs, and palm nuts. These bears build tree nests for sleeping during the day from which they
can pluck fruit from nearby branches.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals lists the spectacled bear as vulnerable. This status means
that the bear faces a high risk of extinction in the near future, due to human encroachment on its
habitat, hunting, and poaching to extract bear parts for use in folk medicine. Although the South
American countries that are home to these bears have laws protecting the animal, enforcement of
these laws is usually weak.

C Sun Bear
Sun Bear
The sun bear, an arboreal member of the bear family, is native to the forests of Southeast Asia. It has the shortest
fur of any species of bear and strong claws that aid in climbing and resting in trees. The omnivorous sun bear feeds
on termites, fruit, the tips of palm trees, and small birds and mammals.
Library of Natural Sounds, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. All rights reserved./Joe McDonald/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

Named for the golden-colored crescent that adorns its chest, the sun bear is also known as the
Malayan sun bear and the dog bear. A rarely seen resident of Southeast Asian rain forests, sun bears
range from Burma south to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Sun bears grow up to 1.5 m (5 ft) long
and weigh 27 to 66 kg (60 to 146 lb), making them the smallest of bears. The coat is short, sleek, and
black, with light brown feet and white or orange-yellow fur on the muzzle and chest. The sun bear uses
its extremely long tongue to feed on insects and honey in tree cavities. Its diet also includes fruits and
vegetation, birds, and other small animals.

Scientists know little about the sun bear’s natural history, population numbers, and distribution, so the
animal is listed as “data deficient” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. But with the
destruction of rain forests in Southeast Asia for timber harvesting and to make room for new farmland
and houses, the future of the sun bear seems bleak.

D Sloth Bear
Sloth Bear
The sloth bear, found in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, gets its name from its sluggish movements. Related
to the Asiatic black bear, the sloth bear can weigh up to 140 kg (310 lb). Almost extinct in Sri Lanka, the sloth bear
is also endangered in India due to limited conservation efforts.
E. Hanumantha Rao/Photo Researchers, Inc.

So called for its close resemblance to the sloths of Central and South America, the sloth bear is also
occasionally referred to as the honey bear. Sloth bears inhabit forests and tall grasslands in India,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Their long, shaggy coat is commonly black, but it may be red or reddish-
brown, turning a lighter color on the muzzle and chest. The sloth bear grows to about 1.8 m (about 6
ft) and weighs 54 to 140 kg (119 to 310 lb). Other carnivores that share their habitat, including tigers
and leopards, prey on these medium-sized bears. This may be why sloth bear mothers carry their one
or two cubs on their backs—so that they can protect their young while making a quick escape from
predators.

Sloth bears eat a variety of fruits, honeycombs, and insects, but with their hairless lips, flexible snout,
and gapped front upper teeth these bears are particularly adapted for feeding on ants and termites.
They use their long claws to open ant and termite nests. Their lips and snout then form a central
opening that acts as a suction tube, which they use to suck up the insects, making sucking and
blowing noises that sound like a jackhammer.

Listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, sloth bears are regularly killed in
order to obtain and sell bear parts, such as gallbladders, that are used in folk medicine. Laws to
prevent killing of sloth bears and the export of their parts are poorly enforced, resulting in a significant
harvest of the species for commercial purposes.

E Asiatic Black Bear

Asiatic Black Bear
The Asiatic black bear is a medium-sized bear dwelling in forests in Pakistan and in Korea and the islands of Japan.
The bear is characterized by a black, shaggy coat and a light-colored mark on its chest.
Russell Mittermeier/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

The Asiatic black bear is also known as the moon bear for the distinctive white, crescent-shaped patch
on its chest. Other names for this bear include the Himalayan bear, the Tibetan bear, and the Japanese
black bear. This bear lives in temperate mountain forests in widely separated areas in Asia, ranging
from Afghanistan to Vietnam and northeast China, as well as in southeast Russia, Taiwan, and on the
Japanese islands of Honshū and Shikoku. Its coat is usually black, but it may be brown, with white
coloration on the chin. The Asiatic black bear can reach 1.6 m (5.25 ft) in length and can weigh up to
200 kg (440 lb).

Asiatic black bears climb trees to collect the fruits and nuts that make up most of their diet; they also
gather these morsels on the forest floor. Many Asiatic black bears migrate seasonally—in warmer
months they move to higher elevations and in colder months they return to lower elevations. Most
Asiatic black bears (except those in the southern parts of their range) fatten up in the fall and then
retreat to a den during the winter.

Despite its protection by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES), which regulates and restricts the trade of threatened plants and animals, the Asiatic
black bear is highly prized on the black market. It is a popular circus animal, and it remains a favored
species for gall bladders and other bear parts used in traditional medicine. The IUCN Red List of
Threatened Animals rates this bear as vulnerable. Without strict law enforcement preventing trade on
international markets, this bear is at high risk of extinction in the near future.

F American Black Bear

American Black Bear

The American black bear lives in forests throughout North America, from Alaska and Canada to mountains in
northern Mexico. Unlike most other bear species, the American black bear has adapted to human encroachment on
its habitat, and it is able to survive in populated suburban areas. Despite the bear’s common name, the color of the
American black bear ranges from black to brown, cinnamon, beige, and even pure white.
Paul A. Souders/Corbis

American black bears are native to North America, ranging from Alaska and Canada to mountains in
northern Mexico. They are secretive, forest-living creatures that have learned to adapt to human-
populated areas. They have even been known to winter in suburban back yards without the human
residents’ knowledge. After centuries of hunting and habitat destruction following the European
colonization of North America, black bear numbers are now stable or increasing, even in the eastern
United States where human population is dense. The National Biological Service of the United States
Department of the Interior estimates that there are 650,000 to 700,000 black bears in North America.

The smallest of North America’s three bear species, the American black bear can grow to 1.8 m (6 ft)
in length and weighs from 40 to 300 kg (90 to 660 lb), with males larger than females. American black
bears usually have glossy black coats, although bears with red- and honey-colored coats are common.
The Kermode bear, a subspecies of black bear that lives in the rain forests of British Columbia, Canada,
sports white fur. The black bear’s mostly vegetarian diet includes grass and green plants, berries and
other fruits, and walnuts and acorns, although black bears sometimes eat deer fawns and moose
calves. In preparation for fasting during the winter months, a black bear gains up to 1.5 kg (3 lb) per
day for two months in the fall.

The American black bear is a mostly thriving species in the United States; only isolated black bear
populations in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. Some experts believe that Florida’s small black bear population should have the protection
offered by a threatened status. All 32 states with black bear populations have established carefully
managed sport-hunting programs. Hunters kill more than 40,000 black bears each year. CITES
prohibits the trade in American black bears and bear parts unless a special permit is obtained,
certifying that the trade will not harm the species, that the specimen was obtained legally, and for
living specimens, that adequate measures were taken to assure safe transport.

G Brown Bear

European Brown Bear

The European brown bear inhabits isolated open plains from Norway to the Siberian peninsula and as far south as
Greece. Cubs stay with the mother for two years or more, learning from her how to hunt and find food. Bears are
not as aggressive as is often thought, although a female will attack if she feels her cubs are threatened.
Ojuro Huber/Oxford Scientific Films

The brown bear is distinguished from other bear species by the presence of a prominent shoulder
hump and an upturned snout. The brown bear’s vast range includes parts of Europe, Asia, and North
America, where the bears inhabit a variety of habitats, including tundra, dense forests, and deserts.
Within these regions, populations are mostly small, isolated, and restricted to remote areas. Coat color
in brown bears ranges from a creamy white through various shades of brown to almost jet-black. In
certain subspecies of brown bears, such as the grizzly bear found in inland areas, the hairs on the back
may be white-tipped, giving the outer coat a grayish, or grizzled, appearance.

Brown bears, along with polar bears, are the largest of the bear species. In general, brown bears range
in weight from less than 90 kg (200 lb) for small females to more than 800 kg (1,760 lb) for the largest
males. Brown bear populations differ significantly in size, depending largely on available diet. Coastal
populations that feed on abundant, fatty salmon in Alaska, for instance, may be three times larger
than inland bears, such as grizzlies, which subsist on plant parts, insects, and some meat they steal
from wolves or catch themselves. As a result of their fatty fish diet, the Alaskan brown bear, a
subspecies that ranges throughout coastal Alaska and western Canada, and the Kodiak bear, a
subspecies found on three Alaskan islands that make up the Kodiak archipelago, are the largest brown
bears. The Alaskan brown bear may weigh up to 800 kg (1,760 lb) and reach 2.3 m (7.5 ft) in length.
The Kodiak bear can grow to 770 kg (1,700 lb) and reach the towering height of 3 m (10 ft).

The brown bear population in Alaska is estimated at 32,000. Elsewhere in North America, brown bears
number fewer than 1,000 individuals, and these animals are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals does not list the brown bear, although
populations in Western Europe have been greatly reduced by habitat destruction and hunting. Fewer
than 10 bears remain in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France, and a similar number
survive in the Italian Alps. About 5,000 to 6,000 brown bears live in Eastern Europe, and more than
120,000 live in Russia.

H Polar Bear

Polar Bear on an Ice Floe

The polar bear, the largest of the terrestrial carnivores, is found along the northernmost coasts of the northern
hemisphere as well as on sea ice floes and islands. Strong swimmers, polar bears paddle with their front legs and
steer with the rear and have been known to swim as far as 80 km (50 mi).
Konrad Wothe/Oxford Scientific Films

The polar bear inhabits the polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, where its white fur blends
perfectly with its ice- and snow-covered Arctic habitat. Although primarily found along coasts and ice
floes, polar bears may winter in dens up to 48 km (30 mi) inland. Polar bears are one of the largest
bear species and can grow to a length of 2 m (7 ft) and weigh up to 800 kg (1,760 lb). Excellent long-
distance swimmers, polar bears use their large front feet as paddles and trailing back feet as rudders.
With little vegetation in their frigid environment, polar bears are the most carnivorous of bears, eating
primarily seals and sometimes young walruses. They prefer to hunt seals on land or ice but may stalk
them from under water. During the summer months when ice floes melt, polar bears are unable to
hunt seals and may wander far inland seeking berries, bird eggs, and other foods.

Polar bears are described as “lower risk but conservation dependent” by the IUCN Red List of
Threatened Species. From 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears make up 19 population groups that live in five
Arctic areas of Greenland, Norway, Russia, Canada, and the United States. Since the 1960s
international cooperation in research and conservation has greatly improved the polar bear’s status.
However, polar bear populations still remain at risk from ongoing oil and gas exploration and
development in the Arctic region. Some scientists are concerned that polar bears may be threatened
by global warming. Temperature increases in recent years have caused ice in the southern parts of the
polar bear’s range to break up and melt almost three weeks earlier than they did 25 years ago,
shortening the bears’ seal-hunting season. As a result, polar bears are on average 10 percent thinner
and have 10 percent fewer cubs than they did 25 years ago.

IV BEAR BEHAVIOR

Grizzly Bears Catching Salmon

Many bears spend the spring, summer, and autumn months building energy reserves on which to survive during
winter dormancy, periods of up to seven months when they go without food. Each year, individual bears may return
to a particular stretch of river to await the salmon returning to their streams of origin to reproduce. Here, salmon
moving upstream leap from the water in an effort to navigate river obstacles and strong currents, only to land in
the open jaws of hungry bears.
Energy Productions/The Image Bank

Bears mostly live alone, except for mothers and their cubs, and males and females during mating
season. Bears form temporary groups only in exceptional circumstances, when food is plentiful in a
small area. Alaskan brown bears may collect in the same area to feed on salmon during the annual
salmon runs, when salmon swim up river to reach their spawning grounds. Recent evidence also
suggests that giant pandas may form small social groups, perhaps because bamboo is more
concentrated than the patchy food resources of other bear species. Other bears may live alone but
exist in a social network. A male and female may live in an overlapping home range—although they
tolerate each other, each defends its range from other bears of the same sex. Male young usually
leave their mothers to live in other areas, but female young often live in a range that overlaps with
that of their mother.

The key to a bear’s survival is finding enough food to satisfy the energy demands of its large size.
Bears travel over huge territories in search of food, and they remember the details of the landscape
they cover. They use their excellent memories to return to locations where they have had success
finding food in past years or seasons. Most bears are able to climb trees to chase prey or gain access
to additional plant vegetation. The exceptions are polar bears and large adult brown bears—their
heavy weight makes it difficult for them to climb trees.

Little is known about communication among bears. Vocalizations, scent marking—in which bears use
their urine to mark their territory—and movements of the mouth and ears appear to be communication
methods used by most species. When they need to act threatening or fight, bears tend to stand up on
their hind legs, perhaps to appear larger to their rivals. They use their clawed forepaws to slash at
their opponents.

Bears that live in regions with cold winters spend the coldest part of the year asleep in sheltered dens,
including brown bears, American and Asiatic black bears, and female polar bears. Pregnant females
give birth in the winter in the protected surroundings of these dens. After fattening up during the
summer and fall when food is abundant, the bears go into this winter dormancy to conserve energy
during the part of the year when food is scarce. Winter sleep differs from hibernation in that a bear is
easily aroused from sleep. In addition, a bear’s body temperature drops only a few degrees—an
American black bear with an active body temperature of around 38°C (100°F) will undergo a moderate
drop in body temperature to about 34°C (93°F). In contrast, a true hibernator undergoes more
extensive changes in bodily functions. For instance, the body temperature of the Arctic ground squirrel
drops from 38°C (100°F) to as low as -3°C (27°F).

V REPRODUCTION

Reproduction is seasonal for most bears. For bears living in temperate zones with four seasons, mating
occurs in the spring after bears emerge from winter sleep. Bears that live in tropical regions, such as
sloth bears, mate during the dry season. A male and female typically stay together for one to two
weeks during mating season, mating many times before going their separate ways.

After mating, the gestation, or pregnancy, period generally ranges from seven to nine months,
depending on the species. The actual development period of the unborn young is not as long as the
gestation period suggests because the embryo passes through a period of delayed implantation. In this
process, the newly forming embryo halts development and becomes inactive for as long as six months.
The embryo then resumes its activity and becomes implanted in the wall of the female’s uterus, where
its development proceeds rapidly. In the American black bear an embryo formed from a June mating
may not become implanted until sometime in November. This delayed implantation enables birth to
coincide with a bear’s winter sleep. The vulnerable newborns, born within the safety of dens, receive
additional warmth and protection as they share close quarters with their mother.

Bears usually produce litters of one to three cubs. Like most carnivores, bear babies are smaller at
birth than the young of most other mammals, sometimes weighing 1 percent or less of their mother’s
body weight. A newborn giant panda cub weighs around 113 g (4 oz). All bear young are born blind,
toothless, mostly hairless, and completely helpless. They grow quickly, nourished by milk from their
mother that is high in fat. By about three months of age, cubs leave the den to forage for food with
their mother.

Cubs are weaned at about six months of age but stay with their mother for two to three or more years
while they learn from her what to eat and where to find food. Mothers also try to protect their cubs
from adult males, which sometimes kill cubs. This behavior on the part of males may be a strategy to
increase breeding opportunities, as females without cubs will be more readily available to mate.

Females become sexually mature at four to seven years of age and may then produce young every
two to five years. In general, the age at which a bear first reproduces comes earlier when food is
abundant and later when food is limited.

VI EVOLUTION

Cave Bear Skull

This skull, belonging to the now extinct cave bear, has greatly enlarged canine teeth, probably used to stab and kill
prey. The flattened molars, located at the rear of the mouth, were used to crush prey before swallowing it.
Dorling Kindersley

Bears are the youngest of the carnivore families, having arisen from doglike ancestors during the
Eocene Epoch, around 55 million to 38 million years ago. The earliest bears had the characteristics of
both dogs and bears, with heavy-set features and blunter teeth than those of true dogs. Modern bears
appeared in Eurasia around 5 million years ago during the late Miocene Epoch. These bears were
relatively small animals, but some types eventually grew quite large. They diversified and spread
through Europe, Asia, and North America, eventually reaching South America. Fossils indicate that
bears once lived in Africa, with one large primitive species found as far south as present-day South
Africa.

Among the extinct bears was the largest land-living mammalian carnivore. The giant short-faced bear
was almost twice as big as today’s brown bear. Unlike modern bears, it was lightly built, with long legs
and feet that enabled it to run fast. It was a powerful hunter capable of killing large prey. The giant
short-faced bear lived in North America during the Pleistocene Epoch, from 1.6 million to 10,000 years
ago. The earliest people to reach North America, perhaps as early as 15,000years ago, must have
found this animal truly frightening. The short-faced bear spread into South America. Scientists believe
the spectacled bear is a smaller relative of this extinct bear.

Perhaps the most famous extinct species is the great cave bear, which lived in Europe around the
Middle and Late Pleistocene and became extinct around 10,000 years ago. Its bones have been found
in caves from Spain to the Caucasus. The largest deposit of remains is that of the Drachenhohle caves
in Austria, which contain the remains of about 30,000 cave bears. Many of the remains are those of
animals that over the centuries died in the caves during their winter dormancy, probably as a result of
illness, lack of food, or old age. Distinguished by a massive skull and a domed forehead, this bear was
as large as the modern Alaskan brown bear. Its teeth indicate that it ate an almost exclusively
vegetarian diet. Cave drawings created by Ice Age humans show that they occasionally hunted cave
bears. For several thousand years the modern brown bear and the cave bear co-existed, but the cave
bear became extinct around 10,000 years ago.

The modern brown bear first appeared in Asia during the Middle Pleistocene Epoch and then spread to
North America and Europe, even reaching northern Africa. A population of brown bears that lived along
the coast became specialized for hunting seals, eventually evolving into the polar bear around 700,000
years ago. The American black bear dates to before the Late Pleistocene, and unlike today’s black
bears, these prehistoric black bears grew as large as modern grizzlies. The first giant pandas appeared
in Europe in the late Miocene and were found in eastern Asia during the Pleistocene Epoch.

VII BEARS AND HUMANS

Humans have hunted bears since prehistoric times, using bear flesh for food and bear fur to make
clothing. Early humans may have learned which plants were edible by watching cave bears forage for
food. More recently, humans have contributed to the decline of bear populations worldwide, mainly by
encroaching on bear habitats through farming, settlement, logging, and mining. Despite laws
protecting bears, people continue to hunt bears for sport, for food, to protect crops and livestock, and
for certain bear parts used in a variety of traditional medicines.

As humans encroach on bear habitats, the opportunity for humans and bears to interact is becoming
more and more common. In general, bears prefer to avoid humans, but often they have no choice but
to enter suburbs and other populated areas in search of food. Humans may also stumble upon bears
that are foraging for food in wilderness areas. Bear attacks are extremely rare, and most human
encounters with a bear that result in the bear responding aggressively are the result of humans
surprising bears and causing them to feel threatened.

To avoid dangerous encounters with bears, the Minnesota-based American Bear Association, a
nonprofit organization, recommends that people who come into contact with a bear not run away. A
bear can easily outrun a human. Instead, the association advises people to stay calm and avoid direct
eye contact with the bear. According to the association, people should talk to the bear in a soothing
voice, try to appear larger by raising their arms over their head, and slowly back away from the bear
and retreat from the area, making a wide detour around the bear.

Scientific classification: The eight living species of bears make up the family Ursidae in the order
Carnivora, class Mammalia. The giant panda is classified as Ailuropoda melanoleuca. The spectacled
bear is classified as Tremarctos ornatus. The sun bear is Ursus malayanus, and the sloth bear is
Melursus ursinus. The Asiatic black bear is Ursus thibetanus. The American black bear is Ursus
americanus and the subspecies Kermode bear is Ursus americanus kermodei. The brown bear is Ursus
arctos, the subspecies grizzly and Alaskan brown bear are both classified as Ursus arctos horribilis, and
the Kodiak bear is Ursus arctos middendorffi. The polar bear is classified as Ursus maritimus.

Contributed By:
John Seidensticker
Susan Lumpkin

Bears
Discovery Enterprises, LLC
Bears
Discovery Enterprises,

Red Panda
The red panda lives in the bamboo thickets and woodlands of western China and in the Tibetan Himalayas. Its red
fur, white face markings, white ears, and ringed tail make this mammal look like a large fox.
Kenneth W. Fink/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

Bamboo
I INTRODUCTION
Bamboo
Bamboo is the common name for about 45 genera of a perennial treelike plant. It grows most abundantly in
southeastern Asia where it has hundreds of practical applications, such as in construction and decoration and as
paper or food. The plant's stems, called culms, consist of hollow sections called internodes which are interrupted by
regularly spaced nodes, giving bamboo its jointed appearance.
Bill Bachmann/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Bamboo, common name for about 45 genera and about 480 species of perennial, woody, usually
shrubby or treelike plants of the grass family (see Grasses). Bamboos occur mostly in tropical and
subtropical areas, from sea level to snow-capped mountain peaks, with a few species reaching into
temperate areas. They are most abundant in southeastern Asia, with some species in the Americas
and Africa and none in Australia. The plants range from stiff reeds about 1 m (about 3 ft) tall to giants
reaching 50 m (164 ft) in height and 30 cm (12 in) in diameter near the base. Most bamboos are erect,
but some are viny, producing impenetrable thickets in some areas.

II STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERISTICS

Bamboos are easily recognized by their woody, jointed stems, called culms. The culms consist of
hollow sections called internodes, which are interrupted by regularly spaced solid partitions called
nodes. At each node a sheath protects a bud, which may develop into either a branch or an
inflorescence (flower cluster). Bamboo stems develop from horizontal, underground rhizomes
(thickened plant stems). The tips of new shoots are protected by overlapping scales, which are shed as
the internodes elongate. Initially, new shoots grow slowly, but the growth rate increases rapidly and
may reach nearly 60 cm (24 in) per day in some gigantic tropical species. The main shoot does not
bear leaves and usually does not produce branches until it is fully elongated. Branches grow from the
buds present at each node, and branches may themselves produce secondary or even tertiary
branches. It is on these ultimate branches that bamboos produce their usually linear, flat, and many-
veined leaves.

The culms of bamboos are green because they contain abundant chlorophyll in the tissue immediately
below the surface. Thus, the culms serve as a major photosynthetic surface, especially because they
elongate before the leaves themselves develop.
The floral structure of bamboos is basically that of the grass family. Because of details in the flowers,
however, bamboos are considered primitive among the grasses. That is, the bamboos typically have
three lodicules (scales at the base of an ovary), six stamens, and three stigmas (the germination areas
of the pistil), rather than the two lodicules, three stamens, and two stigmas typical of most grasses. In
addition, although many bamboos flower annually, many others flower only at intervals of 10 to 100
years. All members of a particular species flower at the same time, and the plants die shortly after
flowering and setting their seed. The individual species are perpetuated by the seed or by new culms
sprouted from rhizomes.

III USES

Bamboos are among the plants most widely used by humans. In the tropics they are used for
constructing houses, rafts, bridges, and scaffolding. Split and flattened culms can be used as flooring
and interwoven to make baskets, mats, hats, fish traps, and other articles; culms of large species may
be used as containers for liquids. Paper is made from bamboo pulp, and fishing rods, water pipes,
musical instruments, and chopsticks from other parts. Many bamboos are planted as ornamentals, and
young shoots are eaten as a vegetable. The grain is also a food.

Scientific classification: Bamboos belong to the family Poaceae (formerly Gramineae).

Contributed By:
Marshall R. Crosby

Giant Panda
I INTRODUCTION

Giant Panda, bamboo-eating bear that lives in forests high in the mountains of central China. As one of
the rarest but most recognized animals in the world, the giant panda has become an international
emblem of endangered species and wildlife conservation efforts. The Chinese name for the giant
panda, da xiong mao, means “great bear-cat.”

II PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Giant Panda
An enlarged wrist bone provides the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, with a second “thumb” to grip the
bamboo shoots that are the mainstay of its diet. This animal, discovered as recently as 1839, exists naturally only
in the cool mountain forests of the Sichuan (Szechwan), Shaanxi (Shensi), and Gansu (Kansu) provinces of China.
There are very few still living in the wild, and efforts at captive breeding have been largely unsuccessful.
BBC Natural History Sound Library. All rights reserved./Art Wolfe/ALLSTOCK, INC.

The giant panda resembles other bears in general appearance, with the exception of its coloring. The
giant panda is white with black patches over its eyes, ears, and legs and a black band across its
shoulders. Like other bears, the giant panda has long, shaggy fur. It keeps the giant panda warm in the
cold and damp forest.

Giant pandas have an enlarged wrist bone on the forefoot that functions as an opposable thumb. Their
premolar teeth and molars are generally larger and broader than those of other bears, and their jaw
bones and cheek muscles are exceptionally strong. These adaptations assist giant pandas in holding,
crushing, and eating bamboo.

An adult giant panda usually weighs between 75 and 160 kg (between 165 and 350 lb). Males are
generally 20 percent heavier than females. The giant panda grows to about 1.5 m (about 5 ft) in head-
and-body length, plus a 12.5-cm (5-in) tail.

III HABITAT AND BEHAVIOR

Giant pandas are found in the wild in the Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi provinces of central China. They
live in a few rugged mountain ranges at the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau where temperate
broadleaf and coniferous forests contain dense stands of bamboo. Giant pandas are usually found at
elevations between 2,300 and 3,800 m (7,500 and 12,500 ft) but will relocate to lower elevations in
winter and spring. However, the zone of bamboo vegetation below 1,200 m (3,800 ft) has been cleared
for agriculture in many areas, greatly restricting the giant panda’s range.

Unlike other bears that live in temperate climates, giant pandas do not hibernate. Bamboo is usually
abundant and green even in winter, so they generally have no lack of food.

Although giant pandas eat bamboo, they have the digestive system of a carnivore like other bears.
Their system cannot efficiently digest bamboo, so they must eat large amounts to obtain enough
nutrition. A giant panda must consume between 12 and 38 kg (26 and 84 lb) of bamboo each day. It
spends 10 to 16 hours a day foraging and eating. A giant panda usually feeds in a sitting position,
enabling it to grasp a bamboo stalk between its “thumb” and first two digits. It strips away the
bamboo’s tough outer layer with its teeth, and then slowly eats the peeled stalk. It also eats bamboo
leaves, shoots, and roots. If its usual food supply is unavailable, a giant panda may feed on other
plants, such as irises and crocuses, or even small animals, such as rodents.

When not eating, a giant panda spends most of its time sleeping and resting. Giant pandas seem to
have no permanent den, although they find shelter and give birth in caves or hollow trees.

Giant pandas are fairly solitary most of the year. Small groups of giant pandas share a large territory
and sometimes meet outside the breeding season. Both males and females may have overlapping
ranges, and males show no evidence of territorial behavior other than scent-marking their routes.
Giant pandas make a variety of sounds to communicate with each other, including bleats, honks,
barks, growls, moans, and squeals. However, they never roar like some other bears.

Mating takes place from March to May, and the young are born during August or September. A
newborn cub usually weighs only 90 to 130 g (3 to 5 oz) and is about the size of a stick of butter. Born
nearly hairless and unable to open its eyes for 40 to 60 days, the cub is completely defenseless and
dependent on its mother. A giant panda mother will cradle her tiny cub in one paw and hold it close to
her chest, nursing it often. Nearly half of giant panda pregnancies produce twins, but only one cub
usually survives in the wild because the mother will neglect the other one. In captive breeding centers,
human caretakers will switch the cubs so each receives enough milk from the mother to survive.

A giant panda cub begins to walk when it is three to four months old. It starts eating bamboo around
the fifth month of its life but will not be fully weaned from its mother’s milk until the eighth or ninth
month. Giant panda cubs may stay with their mothers for up to three years before striking out on their
own.

In the wild, a female giant panda will usually have a cub every other year for about 15 years of her life.
However, many panda cubs do not survive to adulthood, and losses of young hinder the recovery of
giant panda populations. Giant pandas generally live to between 20 and 35 years of age in captivity,
and it is believed their lifespan is longer in the wild.

IV CONSERVATION STATUS
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) lists the giant panda as an endangered species. The giant panda
is officially protected in China. An estimated 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild, about 60 percent of
them in protected forests. More than 160 pandas live in captive settings such as zoos and breeding
centers, mostly in China.

Because giant pandas are restricted to a small area of China, their status may be the most precarious
of all the species of bears. World interest and research funds from many nations have improved the
giant panda’s prospects, but the species remains vulnerable.

Habitat destruction ranks as the greatest threat to the giant panda’s survival. Giant pandas have lost
most of their original habitat to an expanding human population. Giant pandas were once widespread
in southern and eastern China. Due to human settlement and development, giant pandas have been
pushed to the edge of their former distribution. They are now confined to small isolated patches of
forest on six mountain ranges in central China.

So many bamboo forests have been cleared at lower elevations that often only one species of bamboo
survives on any given mountain. This lack of diversity in bamboo forests represents a threat to giant
panda populations. In certain areas, giant pandas have died of starvation due to shortages of edible
bamboo. The shortages occurred after entire bamboo forests flowered and set their seed. In the life
cycle of bamboo, a mass flowering may happen at intervals of 1 to 100 years. The interval depends on
the bamboo species, and only plants of the same species will flower at the same time. The mature
plants die shortly afterward. It can take years for the bamboo sprouts, which grow from the seeds, to
become tall enough to sustain a population of giant pandas. Before so many bamboo forests were
cleared, giant pandas had been able to move up and down the mountainsides to find different types of
bamboo to eat.

Poaching (illegal hunting) continues to be a threat to giant pandas, despite severe penalties. Giant
pandas are also injured or killed in illegal traps and snares set for other animals, such as musk deer
and other kinds of bears.

V CONSERVATION EFFORTS
Protecting China's Wildlife
This lush frost-covered forest is part of the Wolong panda preserve, situated in a remote area of Sichuan province in
south central China. Because much of China's land has been cleared for agriculture and industry, the country has
lost a great deal of natural habitat. But China has also established more than 450 nature reserves to protect distinct
ecological environments and endangered plants and animals. Wolong is one of 13 protected areas for the delightful
giant panda.
Mark Newman/Tom Stack and Associates

The government of China has created more than 50 giant panda reserves, protecting more than 45
percent of the animal’s remaining habitat. The first and largest of these, the Wolong Panda Reserve in
Sichuan Province, was established in 1963. This and six other reserves in the province are now part of
the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, established as a World Heritage Site in 2006. Covering more
than 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq mi), the mountain sanctuary is home to about a third of the world’s wild
giant panda population. The World Heritage Site designation qualifies the area for additional
international aid in managing and protecting the giant panda populations there.

Overall, nature reserves cover more than 16,000 sq km (more than 6,000 sq mi) of forest in and
around the giant panda’s habitat. However, studies indicate this is not enough to sustain wild giant
panda populations in the long term. The giant panda’s habitat is still fragmented, and the surviving
populations are small and isolated from each other. Conservationists hope to establish protected forest
corridors linking these isolated populations, in part to help reduce the incidence of inbreeding.

A Research on Giant Pandas

In 1980 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) became the first international organization to work in China at
the Chinese government’s invitation. The WWF led the first-ever field studies and population surveys of
the giant panda. It also helped establish the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant
Panda, based in the Wolong Panda Reserve. The WWF adopted the giant panda as its symbol, and the
animal became an emblem of wildlife conservation efforts.
Detailed information on wild giant panda populations remains scarce, largely due to difficulties in
studying and monitoring them in their remote, rugged habitat. The WWF and other international
organizations have collaborated with Chinese scientists on comprehensive field studies to learn more
about the giant panda’s ecology and behavior. In recent years more is being learned about the elusive
animal and its habitat thanks to more high-tech surveying techniques, such as satellite imagery.

Scientists long debated whether giant pandas are more closely related to raccoons or bears. In the
1980s molecular analyses comparing the proteins and genetic material (DNA) of giant pandas with
those of bears and members of the raccoon family fully corroborated the substantial anatomical and
fossil evidence classifying the giant panda as a member of the bear family. DNA analysis suggests the
ancestors of the giant panda branched off from the main bear lineage about 15 million to 18 million
years ago. This knowledge has helped scientists develop more effective conservation programs
specifically suited to bears.

Research is carried out in zoos and breeding centers around the world. Several zoos in the United
States contain giant pandas, including the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the San Diego Zoo in
California. These zoos host giant pandas on ten-year loans from China. In 1998 the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service instituted a policy requiring U.S. zoos to partner with China in conservation efforts in
order to host giant pandas. Zoos must contribute funds for habitat conservation in China, as well as
designing research and breeding programs to benefit giant pandas.

B Breeding Programs

Increasing the number of giant pandas in captivity through breeding programs is another important
conservation goal. The zoo population represents an insurance policy against the threat of giant
pandas going extinct in the wild. The first giant panda to be born in captivity was at the Beijing Zoo in
1963. That zoo also produced the first giant panda birth resulting from artificial insemination in 1978.
However, for many years giant pandas were notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. Newborn cubs
suffered high mortality rates, with few surviving the first month.

More recently, intensive and collaborative research on the giant panda has increased the success of
breeding programs. Improvements have included providing giant pandas in captivity with a more
natural, forest-like environment and an enriched diet. Scientists also improved the formula used to
feed newborn cubs, thereby boosting their immune systems. Weak immune systems make young cubs
more likely to die of diseases.

The Wolong Giant Panda Research Center, the world’s leading facility for captive-breeding efforts,
reported unprecedented success in 2005. That year, 11 female giant pandas at the Wolong center
gave birth to 16 cubs, all of which survived. The new mothers at the center included Hua-mei, a giant
panda born in 1999 at the San Diego Zoo. Hua-mei was noteworthy in her own right as the first giant
panda born in North America to survive to adulthood.
VI GIANT PANDA HISTORY

Panda Performing
Pandas perform tricks onstage for the Shanghai Acrobatic Theater in China. This panda twirls a ball with its paws.
Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis

Fossil evidence suggests that giant pandas were already widespread in what is now southern and
eastern China about 2 million to 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch. Giant panda fossils
have also been found in northern Myanmar and northern Vietnam.

References to the giant panda are found in ancient Chinese texts. The Classics of Seas and Mountains,
a 2,500-year-old geography book, refers to “a bear-like, black-and-white animal that…lives in the
Qionglai Mountains south of Yandao County.” This book refers to the giant panda as mo, an ancient
name for the species.

The Western world first became aware of the giant panda in 1869, when the French missionary and
naturalist Père Armand David reported his observations of a dead hunted specimen. In 1916 German
zoologist Hugo Weigold became the first Westerner to see a live giant panda in the wild. In 1936
American socialite Ruth Harkness brought a female cub named Su-lin to the United States. The first
giant panda to reach the country alive, Su-lin was exhibited in the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, gaining
worldwide attention and adulation during her short life. Other giant pandas brought to U.S. zoos in the
years after Su-lin also died early due to lack of knowledge about how to properly care for them.

In the 1950s the Communist government of China began giving giant pandas as goodwill gifts to other
countries, a practice that became known as “panda diplomacy.” For example, China sent two giant
pandas to the United States in 1972 following a visit to China by President Richard Nixon. China
currently loans pandas for exhibit in zoos around the world in a program that requires cooperative
research and funding for conservation in exchange.

Scientific classification: The giant panda was formerly classified as a member of the raccoon family,
but is now considered a true bear. The giant panda belongs to the subfamily Ailuropodinae in the
family Ursidae, order Carnivora. It is classified as Ailuropoda melanoleuca.

Bear
I INTRODUCTION

Bear, any of a group of mammals distinguished by a large, stocky body; powerful limbs; dense fur; and
a short, stumpy tail. Bears live in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, where they occupy
a wide range of habitats, including mountain, forest, and Arctic wilderness. Over the last century bear
populations have steadily declined as humans have overhunted bears and encroached on their habitat.

Brown Bear with Fish

Despite the considerable fragmentation of its range, the brown bear, Ursus arctos, is still the most widespread
member of its family. It persists in scattered pockets from Spain to Japan and in the northern Rocky Mountains of
the United States. Populations are more continuous in Russia, Alaska, and Canada. This broad range encompasses
much variation, from enormous coastal brown bears in Alaska and Kamchatka to much smaller bears in Southern
Europe, where large, dangerous individuals (and their genes) were eliminated long ago. There are pale cream
brown bears and almost black brown bears. Because of their frosted coats, brown bears of the North American
interior are universally called grizzlies.
Johnny Johnson/Animals Animals

Zoologists (scientists who study animals) classify eight species of bears: giant panda, spectacled bear,
sun bear, sloth bear, Asiatic black bear, American black bear, brown bear, and polar bear. All of these
species, with the exception of some populations of spectacled bears and sun bears, live north of the
equator. Bears are not currently found in Africa, Australia, or Antarctica. All bears share a similar
anatomy, but individual species vary in size, diet, and type of habitat. For example, polar bears live in
frozen Arctic wilderness, where they feed primarily on seals, while sun bears live in Asian rain forests
and dine on insects, fruits, nuts, and small animals. Reaching weights of 800 kg (1,760 lb), polar bears
may grow 12 times larger than their smaller cousins the sun bears, which rarely exceed 66 kg (146 lb)
in weight.

Bears have long fascinated humans. Ancient cave art and more recent paintings and sculpture
illustrate the fear as well as admiration with which people regard the awesome power and acute
intelligence of bears. In fairy tales, bears are the symbolic image of brave deeds. In folk literature, the
bear’s habit of disappearing in winter months and emerging in spring evokes a theme of spiritual
renewal, the replenishment of food, and the return of prosperity. In modern times, as the recreational
use of parks and wilderness areas has grown dramatically, humans have experienced increased
contact with bears. Bear attacks on humans are rare, however. American black bears killed fewer than
40 people during the 20th century. Grizzly bears, a type of brown bear, are more dangerous, but
attacks on humans are still rare. In United States national parks that are home to grizzlies, injury rates
from grizzly bears are about one person per 2 million visitors. Bears prefer to avoid humans, but when
attacks do occur, they are usually the result of humans surprising these nervous, shy, and easily
frightened animals.

II PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Bears are bulky animals with wide shoulders, a short back, short and thick legs, broad paws, and a
short tail. They have an elongated head, rounded ears that stand straight up, small eyes, and a long
snout. Bears hunt for food using an acute sense of hearing and an extremely keen sense of smell—
some can detect odors from more than a mile away. Bear eyesight is probably similar in acuity
(sharpness) to human vision. Black bears, and likely other bears, have color vision, which helps them
identify ripe fruits and nuts.

Bears have 32 to 42 teeth, depending on the species, and these teeth reflect a varied diet of both
plants and animals. Although all bears are members of the order Carnivora and are meat eaters, all
but polar bears have become omnivorous—that is, they eat many types of foods, including lichens,
roots, nuts, fruits, berries, seaweed, grasses, honey, grubs, caterpillars, and ants. Bear teeth are not as
sharp or specialized for shearing meat as are those of some other carnivores, such as cats. For
instance, canine teeth in most carnivores are generally large and pointed and are used for killing prey.
In bears, however, these teeth are relatively small, and bears typically use them more to defend
themselves or as tools. The molar teeth of bears are broad and flat, adapted to shredding and grinding
plant food into small, easily digested pieces.

Bears have four limbs that end in paws. Each paw has five long, sharp claws that are unretractile—
unlike cats, bears are not able to retract their claws. Depending on the species, these claws may be
used to climb trees, rip open termite nests and beehives, dig up roots, or catch prey. Bears walk
differently than most carnivores, which tend to walk on their toes in a way that is adapted for speed.
Like humans, bears have a plantigrade stance, walking with their weight on the soles of their hindfeet,
with the heel touching the ground, while the toes of the forefeet are used more for balance. This
distribution of weight toward the hindfeet gives bears a lumbering gait. Although bears are slower than
most other carnivores, such as lions and wolves, a running bear can still reach speeds of 50 km/h (30
mph). Bears are far stronger than other carnivores, and their limbs are more flexible and agile.

Bear fur is long and shaggy. Fur color varies among species, ranging from all white, blonde, or cream
to black and white to all black or all brown. Fur color may also vary within a species. American black
bears, for instance, may be black, brown, reddish-brown, or bluish-black. Several species, such as the
sun bear and spectacled bear, have lighter-colored chest and facial markings.

Males are larger than females in all bear species, but the difference between the sexes varies and is
greatest in the largest species. Huge male polar bears may weigh twice as much as female polar
bears, while smaller male and female sun bears are similar in weight.

The life span of bears is not well known. The range seems to be about 25 to 40 years. Bears in the wild
tend to die at a younger age than do their counterparts in zoos.

III TYPES OF BEARS

Bears
Discovery Enterprises, LLC

The bear family includes eight species, each showing remarkable variation in physical features and
habits. Some scientists believe that bears and animals in the raccoon family share a common ancestor
and are more closely related to each other than to other carnivores. Other scientists believe that bears
are more closely related to walruses and sea lions. In the past, zoologists placed the giant panda in the
raccoon family, but recent analysis of the giant panda’s genetic makeup and fossil evidence have
convincingly established the giant panda as a member of the bear family.
A Giant Panda

Giant Panda
Giant pandas were once believed to be more closely related to raccoons than bears, but molecular analysis
conducted in the mid-1980s suggests that giant pandas are more appropriately grouped with the true bears. Giant
pandas are found in the higher elevations of western China and the Tibetan Himalayas, where bamboo, the staple
of their diet, is prolific. This giant panda uses a special bone at the base of its forefoot to grasp bamboo shoots.
Art Wolfe/ALLSTOCK, INC.

Possibly the world’s best-known wild animal, the giant panda has a round body, a bullet-like head with
small ears, and a short, stumpy tail. Its shaggy coat is white with a black patch around each eye and a
ring of black around the shoulders, front legs, and chest. The giant panda can reach a length of 1.5 m
(5 ft) and weigh 100 kg (220 lb).

The giant panda has the smallest range and smallest population of all the bears. Only about 1,000
individuals live in bamboo forests in the mountains of south-central China. Bamboo makes up about 99
percent of the giant panda’s diet, and the bear spends 12 to 14 hours each day eating up to 18 kg (40
lb) of bamboo leaves and stems or 39 kg (85 lb) of shoots. The giant panda brings food to its mouth
with its front paws, using a long wrist bone that works like a thumb to grasp bamboo stems. Despite
their cute, cuddly appearance, giant pandas can be provoked to aggressive defensive behavior.

With such a small population, a narrow habitat range, and a highly specialized diet, giant pandas are
widely considered in great danger of extinction. They are classified as endangered species on both the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species List and the Red List of Threatened
Species compiled by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), a nongovernmental organization that
compiles global information on endangered species. These classifications offer these animals
protection and provide opportunities for conservation management, including strictly enforced
protection from hunting in their habitats. The Chinese government, as well as many private
organizations and zoos around the world, support conservation activities that encourage local people
to protect the giant panda and its habitat. A number of programs sponsored by zoos or other breeding
centers have attempted to breed giant pandas in captivity, although most of these programs have
proved unsuccessful. Among the difficulties faced by captive breeders has been the problem of
encouraging a female giant panda to mate with a selected male during the two to three days of the
year when she is most fertile, a period known as estrus.

B Spectacled Bear

Spectacled Bear
Named for its banded face, this dark-haired bear is the only bear of South America. It lives in two isolated
populations on the slopes of the central Andes Mountains, where it feeds on wild fruits, leaves, grasses, small
animals, and insects.
Mark Moffett/Minden Pictures

Creamy-white rings surrounding the eyes give the spectacled bear its name. Its shaggy coat of black
or dark brown is marked by white or yellow coloring on the muzzle and in a roughly shaped circle on
the chest. Also known as the Andean bear, it is the only bear native to South America, where it lives on
the forested slopes of the Andes Mountains from western Venezuela and Colombia south to Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia.

Spectacled bears grow to a length of about 1.8 m (about 6 ft) and weigh 62 to 154 kg (137 to 340 lb);
the males are much larger than the females. Spectacled bears eat diverse foods, including small
mammals and birds, grasses, fruits and berries, and parts of bromeliads (plants such as pineapple),
orchid bulbs, and palm nuts. These bears build tree nests for sleeping during the day from which they
can pluck fruit from nearby branches.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals lists the spectacled bear as vulnerable. This status means
that the bear faces a high risk of extinction in the near future, due to human encroachment on its
habitat, hunting, and poaching to extract bear parts for use in folk medicine. Although the South
American countries that are home to these bears have laws protecting the animal, enforcement of
these laws is usually weak.

C Sun Bear

Sun Bear
The sun bear, an arboreal member of the bear family, is native to the forests of Southeast Asia. It has the shortest
fur of any species of bear and strong claws that aid in climbing and resting in trees. The omnivorous sun bear feeds
on termites, fruit, the tips of palm trees, and small birds and mammals.
Library of Natural Sounds, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. All rights reserved./Joe McDonald/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

Named for the golden-colored crescent that adorns its chest, the sun bear is also known as the
Malayan sun bear and the dog bear. A rarely seen resident of Southeast Asian rain forests, sun bears
range from Burma south to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Sun bears grow up to 1.5 m (5 ft) long
and weigh 27 to 66 kg (60 to 146 lb), making them the smallest of bears. The coat is short, sleek, and
black, with light brown feet and white or orange-yellow fur on the muzzle and chest. The sun bear uses
its extremely long tongue to feed on insects and honey in tree cavities. Its diet also includes fruits and
vegetation, birds, and other small animals.

Scientists know little about the sun bear’s natural history, population numbers, and distribution, so the
animal is listed as “data deficient” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. But with the
destruction of rain forests in Southeast Asia for timber harvesting and to make room for new farmland
and houses, the future of the sun bear seems bleak.

D Sloth Bear
Sloth Bear
The sloth bear, found in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, gets its name from its sluggish movements. Related
to the Asiatic black bear, the sloth bear can weigh up to 140 kg (310 lb). Almost extinct in Sri Lanka, the sloth bear
is also endangered in India due to limited conservation efforts.
E. Hanumantha Rao/Photo Researchers, Inc.

So called for its close resemblance to the sloths of Central and South America, the sloth bear is also
occasionally referred to as the honey bear. Sloth bears inhabit forests and tall grasslands in India,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Their long, shaggy coat is commonly black, but it may be red or reddish-
brown, turning a lighter color on the muzzle and chest. The sloth bear grows to about 1.8 m (about 6
ft) and weighs 54 to 140 kg (119 to 310 lb). Other carnivores that share their habitat, including tigers
and leopards, prey on these medium-sized bears. This may be why sloth bear mothers carry their one
or two cubs on their backs—so that they can protect their young while making a quick escape from
predators.

Sloth bears eat a variety of fruits, honeycombs, and insects, but with their hairless lips, flexible snout,
and gapped front upper teeth these bears are particularly adapted for feeding on ants and termites.
They use their long claws to open ant and termite nests. Their lips and snout then form a central
opening that acts as a suction tube, which they use to suck up the insects, making sucking and
blowing noises that sound like a jackhammer.

Listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, sloth bears are regularly killed in
order to obtain and sell bear parts, such as gallbladders, that are used in folk medicine. Laws to
prevent killing of sloth bears and the export of their parts are poorly enforced, resulting in a significant
harvest of the species for commercial purposes.

E Asiatic Black Bear

Asiatic Black Bear
The Asiatic black bear is a medium-sized bear dwelling in forests in Pakistan and in Korea and the islands of Japan.
The bear is characterized by a black, shaggy coat and a light-colored mark on its chest.
Russell Mittermeier/Bruce Coleman, Inc.

The Asiatic black bear is also known as the moon bear for the distinctive white, crescent-shaped patch
on its chest. Other names for this bear include the Himalayan bear, the Tibetan bear, and the Japanese
black bear. This bear lives in temperate mountain forests in widely separated areas in Asia, ranging
from Afghanistan to Vietnam and northeast China, as well as in southeast Russia, Taiwan, and on the
Japanese islands of Honshū and Shikoku. Its coat is usually black, but it may be brown, with white
coloration on the chin. The Asiatic black bear can reach 1.6 m (5.25 ft) in length and can weigh up to
200 kg (440 lb).

Asiatic black bears climb trees to collect the fruits and nuts that make up most of their diet; they also
gather these morsels on the forest floor. Many Asiatic black bears migrate seasonally—in warmer
months they move to higher elevations and in colder months they return to lower elevations. Most
Asiatic black bears (except those in the southern parts of their range) fatten up in the fall and then
retreat to a den during the winter.

Despite its protection by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES), which regulates and restricts the trade of threatened plants and animals, the Asiatic
black bear is highly prized on the black market. It is a popular circus animal, and it remains a favored
species for gall bladders and other bear parts used in traditional medicine. The IUCN Red List of
Threatened Animals rates this bear as vulnerable. Without strict law enforcement preventing trade on
international markets, this bear is at high risk of extinction in the near future.

F American Black Bear

American Black Bear

The American black bear lives in forests throughout North America, from Alaska and Canada to mountains in
northern Mexico. Unlike most other bear species, the American black bear has adapted to human encroachment on
its habitat, and it is able to survive in populated suburban areas. Despite the bear’s common name, the color of the
American black bear ranges from black to brown, cinnamon, beige, and even pure white.
Paul A. Souders/Corbis

American black bears are native to North America, ranging from Alaska and Canada to mountains in
northern Mexico. They are secretive, forest-living creatures that have learned to adapt to human-
populated areas. They have even been known to winter in suburban back yards without the human
residents’ knowledge. After centuries of hunting and habitat destruction following the European
colonization of North America, black bear numbers are now stable or increasing, even in the eastern
United States where human population is dense. The National Biological Service of the United States
Department of the Interior estimates that there are 650,000 to 700,000 black bears in North America.

The smallest of North America’s three bear species, the American black bear can grow to 1.8 m (6 ft)
in length and weighs from 40 to 300 kg (90 to 660 lb), with males larger than females. American black
bears usually have glossy black coats, although bears with red- and honey-colored coats are common.
The Kermode bear, a subspecies of black bear that lives in the rain forests of British Columbia, Canada,
sports white fur. The black bear’s mostly vegetarian diet includes grass and green plants, berries and
other fruits, and walnuts and acorns, although black bears sometimes eat deer fawns and moose
calves. In preparation for fasting during the winter months, a black bear gains up to 1.5 kg (3 lb) per
day for two months in the fall.

The American black bear is a mostly thriving species in the United States; only isolated black bear
populations in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. Some experts believe that Florida’s small black bear population should have the protection
offered by a threatened status. All 32 states with black bear populations have established carefully
managed sport-hunting programs. Hunters kill more than 40,000 black bears each year. CITES
prohibits the trade in American black bears and bear parts unless a special permit is obtained,
certifying that the trade will not harm the species, that the specimen was obtained legally, and for
living specimens, that adequate measures were taken to assure safe transport.

G Brown Bear

European Brown Bear

The European brown bear inhabits isolated open plains from Norway to the Siberian peninsula and as far south as
Greece. Cubs stay with the mother for two years or more, learning from her how to hunt and find food. Bears are
not as aggressive as is often thought, although a female will attack if she feels her cubs are threatened.
Ojuro Huber/Oxford Scientific Films

The brown bear is distinguished from other bear species by the presence of a prominent shoulder
hump and an upturned snout. The brown bear’s vast range includes parts of Europe, Asia, and North
America, where the bears inhabit a variety of habitats, including tundra, dense forests, and deserts.
Within these regions, populations are mostly small, isolated, and restricted to remote areas. Coat color
in brown bears ranges from a creamy white through various shades of brown to almost jet-black. In
certain subspecies of brown bears, such as the grizzly bear found in inland areas, the hairs on the back
may be white-tipped, giving the outer coat a grayish, or grizzled, appearance.

Brown bears, along with polar bears, are the largest of the bear species. In general, brown bears range
in weight from less than 90 kg (200 lb) for small females to more than 800 kg (1,760 lb) for the largest
males. Brown bear populations differ significantly in size, depending largely on available diet. Coastal
populations that feed on abundant, fatty salmon in Alaska, for instance, may be three times larger
than inland bears, such as grizzlies, which subsist on plant parts, insects, and some meat they steal
from wolves or catch themselves. As a result of their fatty fish diet, the Alaskan brown bear, a
subspecies that ranges throughout coastal Alaska and western Canada, and the Kodiak bear, a
subspecies found on three Alaskan islands that make up the Kodiak archipelago, are the largest brown
bears. The Alaskan brown bear may weigh up to 800 kg (1,760 lb) and reach 2.3 m (7.5 ft) in length.
The Kodiak bear can grow to 770 kg (1,700 lb) and reach the towering height of 3 m (10 ft).

The brown bear population in Alaska is estimated at 32,000. Elsewhere in North America, brown bears
number fewer than 1,000 individuals, and these animals are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals does not list the brown bear, although
populations in Western Europe have been greatly reduced by habitat destruction and hunting. Fewer
than 10 bears remain in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France, and a similar number
survive in the Italian Alps. About 5,000 to 6,000 brown bears live in Eastern Europe, and more than
120,000 live in Russia.

H Polar Bear

Polar Bear on an Ice Floe

The polar bear, the largest of the terrestrial carnivores, is found along the northernmost coasts of the northern
hemisphere as well as on sea ice floes and islands. Strong swimmers, polar bears paddle with their front legs and
steer with the rear and have been known to swim as far as 80 km (50 mi).
Konrad Wothe/Oxford Scientific Films

The polar bear inhabits the polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, where its white fur blends
perfectly with its ice- and snow-covered Arctic habitat. Although primarily found along coasts and ice
floes, polar bears may winter in dens up to 48 km (30 mi) inland. Polar bears are one of the largest
bear species and can grow to a length of 2 m (7 ft) and weigh up to 800 kg (1,760 lb). Excellent long-
distance swimmers, polar bears use their large front feet as paddles and trailing back feet as rudders.
With little vegetation in their frigid environment, polar bears are the most carnivorous of bears, eating
primarily seals and sometimes young walruses. They prefer to hunt seals on land or ice but may stalk
them from under water. During the summer months when ice floes melt, polar bears are unable to
hunt seals and may wander far inland seeking berries, bird eggs, and other foods.

Polar bears are described as “lower risk but conservation dependent” by the IUCN Red List of
Threatened Species. From 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears make up 19 population groups that live in five
Arctic areas of Greenland, Norway, Russia, Canada, and the United States. Since the 1960s
international cooperation in research and conservation has greatly improved the polar bear’s status.
However, polar bear populations still remain at risk from ongoing oil and gas exploration and
development in the Arctic region. Some scientists are concerned that polar bears may be threatened
by global warming. Temperature increases in recent years have caused ice in the southern parts of the
polar bear’s range to break up and melt almost three weeks earlier than they did 25 years ago,
shortening the bears’ seal-hunting season. As a result, polar bears are on average 10 percent thinner
and have 10 percent fewer cubs than they did 25 years ago.

IV BEAR BEHAVIOR

Grizzly Bears Catching Salmon

Many bears spend the spring, summer, and autumn months building energy reserves on which to survive during
winter dormancy, periods of up to seven months when they go without food. Each year, individual bears may return
to a particular stretch of river to await the salmon returning to their streams of origin to reproduce. Here, salmon
moving upstream leap from the water in an effort to navigate river obstacles and strong currents, only to land in
the open jaws of hungry bears.
Energy Productions/The Image Bank

Bears mostly live alone, except for mothers and their cubs, and males and females during mating
season. Bears form temporary groups only in exceptional circumstances, when food is plentiful in a
small area. Alaskan brown bears may collect in the same area to feed on salmon during the annual
salmon runs, when salmon swim up river to reach their spawning grounds. Recent evidence also
suggests that giant pandas may form small social groups, perhaps because bamboo is more
concentrated than the patchy food resources of other bear species. Other bears may live alone but
exist in a social network. A male and female may live in an overlapping home range—although they
tolerate each other, each defends its range from other bears of the same sex. Male young usually
leave their mothers to live in other areas, but female young often live in a range that overlaps with
that of their mother.

The key to a bear’s survival is finding enough food to satisfy the energy demands of its large size.
Bears travel over huge territories in search of food, and they remember the details of the landscape
they cover. They use their excellent memories to return to locations where they have had success
finding food in past years or seasons. Most bears are able to climb trees to chase prey or gain access
to additional plant vegetation. The exceptions are polar bears and large adult brown bears—their
heavy weight makes it difficult for them to climb trees.

Little is known about communication among bears. Vocalizations, scent marking—in which bears use
their urine to mark their territory—and movements of the mouth and ears appear to be communication
methods used by most species. When they need to act threatening or fight, bears tend to stand up on
their hind legs, perhaps to appear larger to their rivals. They use their clawed forepaws to slash at
their opponents.

Bears that live in regions with cold winters spend the coldest part of the year asleep in sheltered dens,
including brown bears, American and Asiatic black bears, and female polar bears. Pregnant females
give birth in the winter in the protected surroundings of these dens. After fattening up during the
summer and fall when food is abundant, the bears go into this winter dormancy to conserve energy
during the part of the year when food is scarce. Winter sleep differs from hibernation in that a bear is
easily aroused from sleep. In addition, a bear’s body temperature drops only a few degrees—an
American black bear with an active body temperature of around 38°C (100°F) will undergo a moderate
drop in body temperature to about 34°C (93°F). In contrast, a true hibernator undergoes more
extensive changes in bodily functions. For instance, the body temperature of the Arctic ground squirrel
drops from 38°C (100°F) to as low as -3°C (27°F).

V REPRODUCTION

Reproduction is seasonal for most bears. For bears living in temperate zones with four seasons, mating
occurs in the spring after bears emerge from winter sleep. Bears that live in tropical regions, such as
sloth bears, mate during the dry season. A male and female typically stay together for one to two
weeks during mating season, mating many times before going their separate ways.

After mating, the gestation, or pregnancy, period generally ranges from seven to nine months,
depending on the species. The actual development period of the unborn young is not as long as the
gestation period suggests because the embryo passes through a period of delayed implantation. In this
process, the newly forming embryo halts development and becomes inactive for as long as six months.
The embryo then resumes its activity and becomes implanted in the wall of the female’s uterus, where
its development proceeds rapidly. In the American black bear an embryo formed from a June mating
may not become implanted until sometime in November. This delayed implantation enables birth to
coincide with a bear’s winter sleep. The vulnerable newborns, born within the safety of dens, receive
additional warmth and protection as they share close quarters with their mother.

Bears usually produce litters of one to three cubs. Like most carnivores, bear babies are smaller at
birth than the young of most other mammals, sometimes weighing 1 percent or less of their mother’s
body weight. A newborn giant panda cub weighs around 113 g (4 oz). All bear young are born blind,
toothless, mostly hairless, and completely helpless. They grow quickly, nourished by milk from their
mother that is high in fat. By about three months of age, cubs leave the den to forage for food with
their mother.

Cubs are weaned at about six months of age but stay with their mother for two to three or more years
while they learn from her what to eat and where to find food. Mothers also try to protect their cubs
from adult males, which sometimes kill cubs. This behavior on the part of males may be a strategy to
increase breeding opportunities, as females without cubs will be more readily available to mate.

Females become sexually mature at four to seven years of age and may then produce young every
two to five years. In general, the age at which a bear first reproduces comes earlier when food is
abundant and later when food is limited.

VI EVOLUTION

Cave Bear Skull

This skull, belonging to the now extinct cave bear, has greatly enlarged canine teeth, probably used to stab and kill
prey. The flattened molars, located at the rear of the mouth, were used to crush prey before swallowing it.
Dorling Kindersley

Bears are the youngest of the carnivore families, having arisen from doglike ancestors during the
Eocene Epoch, around 55 million to 38 million years ago. The earliest bears had the characteristics of
both dogs and bears, with heavy-set features and blunter teeth than those of true dogs. Modern bears
appeared in Eurasia around 5 million years ago during the late Miocene Epoch. These bears were
relatively small animals, but some types eventually grew quite large. They diversified and spread
through Europe, Asia, and North America, eventually reaching South America. Fossils indicate that
bears once lived in Africa, with one large primitive species found as far south as present-day South
Africa.

Among the extinct bears was the largest land-living mammalian carnivore. The giant short-faced bear
was almost twice as big as today’s brown bear. Unlike modern bears, it was lightly built, with long legs
and feet that enabled it to run fast. It was a powerful hunter capable of killing large prey. The giant
short-faced bear lived in North America during the Pleistocene Epoch, from 1.6 million to 10,000 years
ago. The earliest people to reach North America, perhaps as early as 15,000years ago, must have
found this animal truly frightening. The short-faced bear spread into South America. Scientists believe
the spectacled bear is a smaller relative of this extinct bear.

Perhaps the most famous extinct species is the great cave bear, which lived in Europe around the
Middle and Late Pleistocene and became extinct around 10,000 years ago. Its bones have been found
in caves from Spain to the Caucasus. The largest deposit of remains is that of the Drachenhohle caves
in Austria, which contain the remains of about 30,000 cave bears. Many of the remains are those of
animals that over the centuries died in the caves during their winter dormancy, probably as a result of
illness, lack of food, or old age. Distinguished by a massive skull and a domed forehead, this bear was
as large as the modern Alaskan brown bear. Its teeth indicate that it ate an almost exclusively
vegetarian diet. Cave drawings created by Ice Age humans show that they occasionally hunted cave
bears. For several thousand years the modern brown bear and the cave bear co-existed, but the cave
bear became extinct around 10,000 years ago.

The modern brown bear first appeared in Asia during the Middle Pleistocene Epoch and then spread to
North America and Europe, even reaching northern Africa. A population of brown bears that lived along
the coast became specialized for hunting seals, eventually evolving into the polar bear around 700,000
years ago. The American black bear dates to before the Late Pleistocene, and unlike today’s black
bears, these prehistoric black bears grew as large as modern grizzlies. The first giant pandas appeared
in Europe in the late Miocene and were found in eastern Asia during the Pleistocene Epoch.

VII BEARS AND HUMANS

Humans have hunted bears since prehistoric times, using bear flesh for food and bear fur to make
clothing. Early humans may have learned which plants were edible by watching cave bears forage for
food. More recently, humans have contributed to the decline of bear populations worldwide, mainly by
encroaching on bear habitats through farming, settlement, logging, and mining. Despite laws
protecting bears, people continue to hunt bears for sport, for food, to protect crops and livestock, and
for certain bear parts used in a variety of traditional medicines.

As humans encroach on bear habitats, the opportunity for humans and bears to interact is becoming
more and more common. In general, bears prefer to avoid humans, but often they have no choice but
to enter suburbs and other populated areas in search of food. Humans may also stumble upon bears
that are foraging for food in wilderness areas. Bear attacks are extremely rare, and most human
encounters with a bear that result in the bear responding aggressively are the result of humans
surprising bears and causing them to feel threatened.

To avoid dangerous encounters with bears, the Minnesota-based American Bear Association, a
nonprofit organization, recommends that people who come into contact with a bear not run away. A
bear can easily outrun a human. Instead, the association advises people to stay calm and avoid direct
eye contact with the bear. According to the association, people should talk to the bear in a soothing
voice, try to appear larger by raising their arms over their head, and slowly back away from the bear
and retreat from the area, making a wide detour around the bear.

Scientific classification: The eight living species of bears make up the family Ursidae in the order
Carnivora, class Mammalia. The giant panda is classified as Ailuropoda melanoleuca. The spectacled
bear is classified as Tremarctos ornatus. The sun bear is Ursus malayanus, and the sloth bear is
Melursus ursinus. The Asiatic black bear is Ursus thibetanus. The American black bear is Ursus
americanus and the subspecies Kermode bear is Ursus americanus kermodei. The brown bear is Ursus
arctos, the subspecies grizzly and Alaskan brown bear are both classified as Ursus arctos horribilis, and
the Kodiak bear is Ursus arctos middendorffi. The polar bear is classified as Ursus maritimus.

Contributed By:
John Seidensticker
Susan Lumpkin

red panda
(plural red pan·das)
noun
animal resembling raccoon: a reddish brown animal that resembles a raccoon in appearance. Native to:
Himalayan forests and nearby areas of East Asia.
Latin name: Ailurus fulgens

Arunāchal Pradesh
Arunāchal Pradesh, state, located in northeastern India, bordered on the south by Assam state, on the
west by Bhutan, on the north and northeast by China, and on the east by Myanmar (formerly known as
Burma). Arunāchal Pradesh (Sanskrit for 'Land of the Rising Sun') has an area of 83,743sq km (32,333
sq mi). A portion of the state’s territory is claimed by China.

The terrain rises through a series of foothills in the south to the Lesser Himalayas and, on the Tibetan
border, to the ranges of the Great Himalayas. The state's main rivers are the Brahmaputra, known in
Arunāchal Pradesh as the Siang, and its tributaries, the Tirāp, the Lohit (Zayü Qu), the Subansirī, and
the Bhareli. The climate of the foothills is subtropical; in the mountains, temperatures decrease rapidly
with altitude. Rainfall averages between 2,000 and 4,000 mm (80 and 160 in) a year. The state's
diverse terrain and climate is reflected in its plant and animal life. There are more than 500 species of
orchids, and the abundant forests range from alpine to subtropical. Animal species include tiger,
leopard, elephant, red panda, and deer.

In 2001 Arunāchal Pradesh had a population of 1,091,117 and an average density of 13 persons per sq
km (34 per sq mi). Itānagar is the capital. There are 20 main ethnic groups and more than 50
languages in Arunāchal Pradesh, including Assamese, Hindi, and English, all of which are used as
lingua francas, or common languages. Animism (the worship of nature deities and other spirits) is the
dominant form of religion, but there are also strong Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The Buddhist
monastery in Tawang, dating from the 17th century, is one of the largest in India. The monastery was
the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

The economy of Arunāchal Pradesh is predominantly agricultural and the principal crop is rice. Maize,
millet, wheat, pulses (edible seeds gathered from pea and bean crops), potatoes, sugarcane, fruit, and
oilseeds are also important. Many areas depend on shifting cultivation (also known as slash-and-burn
agriculture), in which trees and grasses are burned from an area so a crop may be planted for several
seasons and then shifted to a new area. Industry is small scale and includes timber, rice, and oil mills;
soap and candle making; sericulture (raising silkworms for the production of raw silk); and handicrafts.
The economic potential of Arunāchal Pradesh's forests and rivers, and of its coal, oil, and other mineral
deposits has yet to be exploited, partly because rough terrain makes transportation difficult. In 1992
the state was opened up to limited tourism.

Arunāchal Pradesh has a single-chamber Legislative Assembly, which has 60 seats. The state sends
three members to the Indian national parliament: one to the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and two to the
Lok Sabha (lower house). Local government is based on 12 administrative districts.

The region that is now Arunāchal Pradesh is mentioned in the Puranas (Sanskrit writings about the
beginning of time), but little else is known of the state's early history. Part of Arunāchal Pradesh was
annexed by the Ahom kings of Assam in the 16th century. In 1826 Assam became part of British India,
but efforts to bring Arunāchal Pradesh under British administration did not begin until the 1880s. In
1912 the region became an administrative unit within Assam, called the North Eastern Frontier Tract
(NEFT); in 1954 the NEFT became the North East Frontier Agency. Its northern boundary with Tibet has
been disputed since 1913, when China rejected British proposals that the border should follow the
crest of the Himalayas. This proposed border, known as the McMahon line, has served as the de facto
boundary since. Following Indian independence in 1947, China laid claim to almost the whole area of
Arunāchal Pradesh. Between 1959 and 1962 Chinese troops crossed the McMahon line several times,
temporarily seizing border posts and capturing Indian troops. In 1962 the Chinese withdrew from
Arunāchal Pradesh. Despite many attempts to negotiate a settlement, this border dispute has not yet
been resolved. The region became the union territory of Arunāchal Pradesh in 1972, and India's 24th
state in December 1986

Secrets of the Wild Panda

In this National Geographic article researchers meet Chinese pandas in their native habitat, observing
their daily habits and determining what most threatens their survival.

Secrets of the Wild Panda

By George B. Schaller

Her name is Zhen-Zhen, meaning “precious.” She is a female giant panda, somewhat past her
prime, a resident near Wuyipeng, our mountain camp in Sichuan's Wolong Natural Reserve,
where China and the World Wildlife Fund are collaborating in panda research. For four years,
from December 1980 to January 1985, I knew Zhen-Zhen. Her story is, in a way, that of all
pandas.
With radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the transmitter attached to a collar around Zhen-
Zhen's neck, I push through the closed ranks of bamboo stems. The signal is loud, insistent; she
is close. Clouds hang low, spruce boughs sag from rain, and my clothes are sodden in this
melancholy weather that bamboo needs to thrive. But without bamboo there can be no pandas.
In a clearing I see Zhen-Zhen. As silently as possible, I approach to within 45 feet and wait.
Raising her massive head, she looks at me with innocent gaze. She snorts softly in agitation; she
does not flee but rests again, a brave and lonely survivor who with the thousand or so others of
her kind must fade away unless we devote ourselves to her future. Like a luminous boulder she
sits, conveying a calm mystery and the durability associated with fir trees and lofty peaks.
Zhen-Zhen changes position at intervals, sleeping on side or belly, and occasionally pawing flies
from her face. After two and a half hours, with the onset of a heavy rain, she stretches, arms
above her head, yawns, and begins to feed on bamboo shoots. She plucks a tender shoot, and,
with teeth and paws working together, peels off the tough outer sheaths, leaving only the juicy
center. She eats rapidly, her actions fluid and skillful, displaying a superb ecological unity
between panda and bamboo, until 17 minutes later she dissolves into the shadows.
Visibility in bamboo is so poor and pandas are so adept at maintaining privacy that this rare
glimpse into Zhen-Zhen's life greatly pleased me. Despite my daily excursions I observed a
panda on the average of only once a month, even though as many as 18 animals visited our 16-
square-mile study area. The bamboo thickets provide pandas with not only food but also safety,
guarding them with seclusion as they travel on traceless paths. Squat and barrel-shaped, pandas
are built for passing under downed trees and through thickets. I am not. My progress is
sufficiently noisy to alert any pandas—and they usually vanish on padded paws.
Unable to observe pandas often, we tried to gain insights into their doings by following tracks in
snow. Wei-Wei, whose name means “grand,” is a middle-aged male with a range encompassing
2.6 square miles of ridges and valleys and overlapping Zhen-Zhen's range. His route is typical:
One January day he moves onto an eastfacing slope with snow deep in the ravines. There he
angles downhill along a spur covered with sphagnum moss and rhododendron. On a knoll stands
a large fir. A pungent odor tells me that Wei-Wei has rubbed the bark with the glandular area
around his anus, depositing his scent. In fact, a panda's short, bushy tail seems designed as a
brush for spreading scent. Wei-Wei, like all pandas, is solitary and usually silent, but he remains
aware of others by using an efficient network of scent posts, often located on ridges and other
prominent sites. To a passing panda, such posts tell who has been there and how long ago.
Wei-Wei settles down to feed in a shallow ravine. Sitting, he bends bamboo toward his mouth,
biting the tops off last year's shoots and the leaves off stems; moving a few feet, he then eats
some more, munching a swath through his domain. Once he ate from 3,481 stems in the course
of one day.
Satiated, Wei-Wei sleeps. He builds no nest, he selects no choice site; he merely lies on the
snow, a log as a backrest, well insulated from the cold by his dense, springy fur. A few hours
later he rises and forages again, leaving behind a copious 17 pounds of spindle-shaped droppings
composed of barely digested stems and leaves. Then he pads on, tracing ridges, traversing slopes,
balancing across logs spanning ravines.
Hu Jinchu, my principal co-worker and China's leading panda expert, and I have investigated
many panda feeding sites. A panda's trail reveals one insistent fact of biological importance: In
evolution the animals have become so fettered by bamboo that their fate is inextricably linked to
it. Teeth of fossil pandas from three million years ago are similar to those of today's animals,
showing that the pact between pandas and bamboo has existed probably as long as pandas have
been pandas.
They have a predilection for meat, if they can get it. However, wildlife is scarce and difficult to
catch for the relatively slow panda. In the winter-bare forest only bamboo provides an easy food
source; leaves remain fresh and green throughout the year.
How does the panda survive on bamboo? Anatomically, the panda is not a herbivore but a
carnivore with a simple stomach and short intestines adapted for digesting meat. Unable to digest
bamboo efficiently, a panda obtains only a few nutrients from its food.
How to solve this dilemma? One way is to stuff in large amounts of bamboo, and this the panda
certainly does. We calculated that it eats 22 to 40 pounds of leaves and stems each day; when on
a diet of bamboo shoots—which are 90 percent water—it may eat some 650 shoots weighing 85
pounds daily.
However, an animal is limited in how much it can eat by the size of its stomach, and digestion
needs time. The panda has overcome these problems by barely chewing and digesting its food
and by passing it through in only five to eight hours. Therefore, so as not to fill itself with useless
bulk, a panda must be selective in what it eats.
Our work showed that Wolong pandas prefer the leaves and pencil-thin stems of arrow bamboo
that grows above an elevation of 8,200 feet to the tall, thick umbrella bamboo low on the slopes.
In spring, however, some animals descend for as long as two months to feast on new umbrella
shoots. A panda's diet of arrow bamboo changes seasonally: old, dry stems in spring, leaves
during the rainy season in summer and autumn, and year-old stems and leaves in winter.
Laboratory analyses reveal that leaves contain much more protein, digestible carbohydrates, and
minerals than do stems. Pandas thus should select leaves. Why then are stems eaten in spring?
We still don't know.
We needed to learn more about panda movements and daily activity cycles, and the best way to
do that is to fit animals with radio collars. To catch a panda is no easy task. We built box traps of
logs where pandas might logically pass. But human logic is not always panda logic. Traps often
remained empty for weeks, and we had to check them daily.
We took turns. I liked climbing to the ridge above camp where several traps were located. With a
series of abrupt pitches, the ridge climbs higher like a dragon's spine. Some days there was sun,
the mountains in gentle repose, the ice pyramid of 20,500-foot Mount Siguniang shining, the air
so clear that perspectives changed: It seemed as if I could easily hurl a stick into the stream far
below. Other days there was a luminous fog so dense that the world beyond ceased to exist. It
was a fitting home for the panda.
The public is so entranced by pandas that their deaths, illnesses, pregnancies, and reluctant
romances receive news coverage all over the world. Such international adulation is relatively
recent. It began on December 18, 1936, when an infant panda arrived in San Francisco. Named
Su-Lin, it was the first panda to reach the West alive.
The panda was, of course, known in China long before the West became aware of it. More than
3,000 years ago, during the Western Zhou Dynasty (ca 1122-771 BC), both The Book of History
and The Book of Songs referred to the pi, an early name for the panda. The Classics of Seas and
Mountains, a famous geography book dating back some 2,500 years, says that “a bearlike, black-
and-white animal that eats copper and iron lives in the Qionglai Mountains south of Yandao
County.” This book refers to the panda as mo, another ancient name for the species. Pandas may
enter villages and lick and chew up cooking pots, probably the basis for their reputation as iron
eaters.
One March day in 1981, Zhou Shude, normally a taciturn researcher, came toward me leaping
high and waving his arms shouting “Daxiongmao!” (“large bear-cat”), the Chinese name for
panda. A panda had been trapped. It was my first meeting with Zhen-Zhen. We drew near the
trap. She sat hunched.
9:09 a.m. Howard Quigley, a New York Zoological Society research fellow who was helping
establish the telemetry program, approached the trap with a syringe mounted on a pole and
injected a sleep-inducing drug.
9:37 a.m. Zhen-Zhen reclined in deep sleep, and we pulled her from the trap. We measured her:
length 65 inches, including the five-inch tail. Together we weighed her: 190 pounds, an animal
of average size. We fastened a radio collar around her neck. “Don't forget to take off the
magnet,” my wife, Kay, reminded us. The radio becomes activated only on removing a magnet.
Somewhat apprehensively I monitored her breathing. Drugs always present risks to an animal.
And we were not dealing with just muscle, skin, and bone but a national treasure, a beloved
animal that has become a bridge of friendship between peoples.
10:35 a.m. Zhen-Zhen's eyes fluttered, she barked, and suddenly raked the air with a sharp-
clawed paw. We pulled her back into the trap to recover. An hour later we opened the door. She
peered out tentatively and, recharged with energy, hurried away.
The radios enabled us to collect two kinds of information. Once a day we determined an animal's
location through simple triangulation and plotted its position on a map. These radios also
revealed something about a panda's activity: A slow-pulsing signal indicates a resting animal, a
fast signal a feeding or traveling one. By listening to the signals at 15-minute intervals
throughout the day and night, we could obtain details about the panda's 24-hour routine.
High on a ridge we built a platform of saplings just large enough to hold a two-man tent. From
there we usually monitored the pandas. Imagine one of our typical winter nights: The
temperature is 19°F, crystal beads of ice are thick on the tent's inner walls, fog has erased the
forest beyond. I have the first shift; Kay, beside me, is withdrawn into her sleeping bag.
In the glow of a kerosene lantern I tune the receiver to Long-Long, a young male. He is on my
right, downslope, active. I switch the radio frequency to Ning-Ning, a female and possibly Zhen-
Zhen's daughter. Her signal is calm and constant, the animal momentarily at rest in a ravine not
far from Long-Long. I pour myself a cup of hot tea from the thermos. Kay hears the stir and
mumbles:
“What time is it?”
“Only 1 a.m.,” I answer. “You can sleep another hour before taking over.”
Then I recline, waiting until it is time to contact the pandas again, each alone in that cold
stillness, their coats the color of snow and the darkness between trees. I cannot imagine a
loneliness deeper than theirs.
Now, after several years of radio monitoring, we have gained some insights into Wolong's panda
society:
Home ranges of resident pandas are small, varying from 1.6 to 2.6 square miles.
A panda shares all or part of its range with other pandas.
Although the ranges of neighboring females may overlap, each has an area of about 75 to 100
acres in which other females do not seem welcome. By contrast, several males may share the
same range, but they avoid each other except when competing for a female in heat.
Pandas are active for 14 hours a day, on the average, most of it spent feeding; they are inactive
for ten hours, usually sleeping from two to four hours at a time.
Pandas may forage at any time of day or night, but there are peaks of activity around dawn and in
late afternoon.
Though sharing ranges, pandas are self-contained, disdaining direct contact; they are alone
together. Meetings are a blend of coolness and violence and remarkably noisy—a medley of
squeals, yips, chirps, moans, barks. Possessing such an inscrutable exterior, a panda primarily
uses sounds to communicate subtle shifts in emotion.
The panda's alternating cycle of eating and sleeping throughout the day and night can be
explained by the low-nutrient diet and rapid food passage through the digestive tract: A panda
must keep its stomach filled to obtain enough calories to survive. We calculated that a panda
digests only about 17 percent of the food it eats; even a goose, notorious for processing grass
quickly, has an efficiency of 25 percent. For a typical herbivore the figure is 80 percent. Though
a panda may spend two-thirds of the day eating, it obtains at best only a small surplus of calories
beyond those it needs for body maintenance and growth.
March to May is the mating season. Although we observed pandas courting, much of what is
known about reproduction has been discovered in zoos.
In panda reproduction the incredible becomes common. The gestation period is variable, 97 to
163 days. Most births occur in late August or September. Newborns are about six inches long,
and weigh a mere three to four ounces—or 1/900 the weight of the mother; their skin is pink and
almost naked, and their eyes are sealed until they are more than a month old. They look like ill-
designed rubber toys. Such an underdeveloped infant should need a gestation period of only 45
days. It appears that the panda has delayed implantation, a condition in which the fertilized egg
divides a few times to the blastocyst stage and then floats free in the uterus for one and a half to
four months before implanting and continuing its growth.
Although a mother often gives birth to two cubs, she usually abandons one of them without
attempting to care for it. To hold, suckle, and carry two helpless young for four to five months
until they are mobile is probably too difficult. So the birth of a second cub is little more than
insurance in the event that the firstborn is not viable.
The constant care needed by a newborn was well shown by the female Mei-Mei at the Chengdu
Zoo. Whether sleeping, sitting, or feeding, she held young Jin-Jin constantly in a broad, hairy
paw, protecting him from cold or injury. If she relaxed her grip or if Jin-Jin was uncomfortable,
he emitted a tremendous squawk, one all out of proportion to his puny size. Mei-Mei
immediately responded by shifting him and sometimes licking him solicitously.
Not until Jin-Jin was nearly a month old, weighing two pounds and warmly furred, did Mei-Mei
first release him from her protective arms into the nest. He was still weak, unable to stand until
75 days old.
Zhen-Zhen helped us understand the tribulations of trying to rear an infant in the wild. She had
no offspring accompanying her in 1980; therefore, when on April 13, 1981, we observed her
mate, we eagerly awaited the autumn birth. In early September she settled into an area of dense
bamboo where we knew of a huge fir with a hollow base, an ideal den site. All month she
remained within a few hundred feet of that tree. No one went near the den for fear of disturbing
her.
By mid-October, when maples had turned gold and viburnum blazed scarlet, Zhen-Zhen traveled
so far afield that we wondered if her cub was ill or dead. Hu Jinchu and I decided to investigate.
We pushed through head-high bamboo toward the den. Suddenly the vegetation ahead swayed,
and Zhen-Zhen lumbered toward us emitting screaming roars. Hu Jinchu retreated hurriedly in
the direction from which we came, and I clambered up a nearby tree. Confused by this sudden
disappearance and silence, Zhen-Zhen first waited near me, quietly listening, then ambled toward
her den. I heard an infant squawk. It was alive and obviously well protected.
Later, after Zhen-Zhen and her young abandoned the den, we examined it. There was a nest
composed of wood dust, raked from the inside walls, and a few twigs. Piled at the entrance were
droppings, as well as several logs that Zhen-Zhen had hauled in for reasons known only to her.
Equally unexplainable was a five-foot fir sapling that she had placed upright in the den.
Two months later, on December 22, Kay and I returned to the den and removed this little fir.
Zhen-Zhen had provided us with a unique Christmas tree. Back at our tent, we trimmed the tree
with ornaments brought to remind us of home and Christmases in distant places. There were
paper Santa Clauses made by our sons when small, a wooden chickadee that perched on a
Christmas bough in the African home of the mountain gorilla, cutouts of animals made from
milktin lids in the jungles of India. Now we added miniature golden monkeys and pandas given
us by Chinese friends.
Somehow Zhen-Zhen lost her infant that winter, and still another of her offspring subsequently
vanished, fate unknown.
The loss of Zhen-Zhen's babies is serious, for the panda not only is rare but also reproduces
extraordinarily slowly. Since a female will raise only one cub at a time, and since this infant
remains with her for one and a half years before becoming independent, she can at most rear one
every two years. However, infants often die of unknown causes. Any female that produces one
surviving cub every three years does well. No one knows the life span of pandas in the wild—in
captivity it is as long as 30 years—but a female's total production of offspring is certainly low.
Therefore, we were all greatly upset when at least two adult pandas in our study area died in
poachers' snares. The local Qiang tribesmen set these snares, not to catch pandas but musk deer.
Although killing a panda carries a jail sentence of two years, the high price of musk from the
deer's musk gland—a product used in medicines—is a great temptation. Inadvertent deaths of
pandas by snaring has kept many populations low; after habitat destruction it is the most serious
threat facing the species.
Having over the years become used to the sights and sounds of our camp, Zhen-Zhen visited on
rare occasions at night to snuffle around the kitchen garbage. In January 1984, while I was away,
the staff made a concerted effort to feed her. Unable to resist liberal helpings of porridge,
sugarcane, and pork, she had virtually moved into camp by the time I returned a month later,
bringing two new researchers—University of Colorado botanist Alan Taylor and University of
Tennessee zoologist Kenneth Johnson.
Unfortunately several researchers had teased Zhen-Zhen: They poked her with sticks until she
attacked, then as she rushed angrily forward, they quickly gave her something to eat. She did not
need a high IQ to learn from this spurious sport that aggression equals food. Having an insatiable
appetite, she now terrorized the camp.
That first night of our return, at 4:40 a.m., I heard the Chinese suddenly talking excitedly:
“Waiguoren!—Foreigner!” And then I heard the foreigner's yells. Before I could leap from my
sleeping bag, Ken burst in from the cold wearing only long johns, unlaced boots, and a hat all
askew. While Zhen-Zhen tried to claw through the back of his tent, he escaped out the door. The
next night Ken and Alan moved into the communal bunkhouse with us.
Life now revolved around Zhen-Zhen; little work was done. The cook was afraid to prepare
breakfast until Zhen-Zhen had satiated herself in his kitchen, our travels on trails became furtive
as we remained alert to sudden attack, and in the communal room every one was prepared for
rapid exit. Later she slashed a Chinese researcher deeply in the leg with her catlike claws.
In the forest Zhen-Zhen had been imposing, but camp diminished her to a porridgelapping,
creative nuisance who was also dangerous. We three Americans argued that feeding must stop.
We were not heeded. Next we suggested that Zhen-Zhen be translocated to another part of the
reserve. But she was taken to the Wolong research center instead, where she remained for three
and a half months before being released back into the wild, ten miles from her former range.
It took Zhen-Zhen five weeks to return home. But this time, on visiting camp, she received no
food, and she settled back into her old life of munching bamboo. She taught everyone that the
freedom of a wild creature should not be casually tampered with.
Scientists have devoted an inordinate amount of time to one bit of panda trivia that also has
strangely intrigued the public: “Is the giant panda a bear or raccoon?” I am often asked this
question. Though the panda is most closely allied to the bears, it has, to the perplexity of
scientists, refused to be neatly categorized. “The panda is a panda,” I reply, finding joy in this
small mystery.
Meanwhile the giant panda as a species lives a marginal life of quiet desperation, stoically seeing
its habitat disappear piece by piece. And as if this were not enough, nature seems to demand
from pandas a terrible penance for providing them with an easy life. At intervals of 40 or more
years there is a mass death of bamboo. During such a bamboo die-off, pandas may starve.
One question obtrudes: Since such dieoffs have occurred for millennia, why did the panda not
become extinct long ago? There are two answers. First, although much bamboo in an area may
die, remaining patches provide pandas with enough food to survive the crisis. Second, several
bamboo species often grow at different altitudes on a slope. When a species died, pandas once
could move up and down the hillsides to find an alternative bamboo to eat. But in recent years
farmers have pushed fields so far up valleys and slopes that now often only one bamboo species
caps a mountain top. When it dies, so may the pandas there.
In May 1983 the arrow bamboo in Wolong and other parts of the Qionglai Mountains mass-
flowered and died. We anticipated this event, for numerous small patches had bloomed in the
preceding years. One previous die-off of arrow bamboo in Wolong occurred in 1935, memorable
because Mao Zedong and his followers passed nearby during the Long March; another occurred
in 1893 during a peasant uprising.
The year 1983 may well be remembered for the global concern for pandas, a shared set of
emotions on behalf of a wild species, something new in human consciousness. China mobilized
for a serious emergency by constructing stations to rehabilitate starving pandas and organized
4,000 people into rescue teams.
How have the pandas fared since the bamboo died? Hu Jinchu and I surveyed the most seriously
affected areas in 1983 and 1984 to assess the conditions. Our conclusion: The die-off is not as
extensive as first reported, and starvation is not widespread, but pandas are dying in several
localities.
Fortunately no Wolong panda has needed rescue or supplementary food: There is still ample
bamboo. Most arrow bamboo has indeed flowered, but enough is still alive that most pandas
have not even bothered to shift to the abundant umbrella bamboo.
However, in the Xi River drainage southwest of Wolong, almost all bamboo is dead. Hemmed in
by high rugged mountains above and cultivation below, pandas have nowhere else to go. Some
have descended to villages in search of food, eating maize stalks, grass, and, once, a leather
jacket. An unknown number have died, several have been captured and released elsewhere, and
others have been taken into captivity.
It is impossible to give accurate figures of pandas that have died or even starving pandas that
have been rescued. Teams searching forests for starving animals and villagers out collecting
wood or medicinal herbs sometimes find the bones of a panda long dead of unknown causes.
And so concerned is everyone about protecting pandas that several have been “rescued”
needlessly in areas with much bamboo. Such animals find their way into official emergency
records.
But statistics are irrelevant; the unnecessary death of even one panda is a tragedy. The
emergency program, carried out with great commitment by the Chinese, will help some pandas
through this temporary crisis but will not provide the species with lasting security or prevent
future disasters.
Can the panda be saved? Of course. All it needs is bamboo and peace. Recent years have taught
us important lessons. Every panda population should have at least two bamboo species available
to lessen the impact of a die-off. Bamboo at low elevations must be preserved, or, where already
gone, replanted. Existing reserves need to be expanded and new reserves created. Poaching must
be controlled. Zoos must cease being a drain on wild populations and instead improve captive
breeding to provide a surplus for restocking pandas in their original home.
China's Ministry of Forestry and the World Wildlife Fund are continuing their collaborative
effort on the panda's behalf, guided by the spirit of their joint agreement that reads: “The giant
panda is not only the precious property of the Chinese people, but also a precious natural
heritage of concern to people all over the world.”
The next task is to make a thorough panda census and bamboo survey as a basis for preparing a
long-term management plan. Detailed studies of the panda's life are continuing. Since I am now
devoting myself to other conservation problems in China, I am no longer in personal touch with
my old panda friends. For Pi-Pi and Wei-Wei, who have died, only the footsteps of memory
rustle on the slopes. And Zhen-Zhen is also gone, having died in 1985 at the age of at least 14
years.
I miss meeting Zhen-Zhen. She has with quiet power become a force for conservation. By
protecting her, we assure the survival of thousands of other species within her habitat. By
protecting her and her kind, we create an awareness that every species is valuable, that even a
panda may shine for only a moment and then no more.
Source: National Geographic, March 1986.