Giant panda's skin is thick, the thickest part can reach 10 mm, and the skin thickness of different parts of the body is also different. The back of the body is thicker than the ventral side, and the lateral side is thicker than the medial side. The average skin thickness is about 5 mm, which is white, elastic and tough. The giant panda's eyesight is extremely underdeveloped. This is because the giant panda lives in a dense bamboo forest for a long time, and the light is very dark and there are many obstacles, which makes its vision very short-sighted. In addition, because its pupils split longitudinally like cats. Therefore, when night falls, they can still act. Habitat Giant pandas live in the high mountains and deep valleys in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in China, which is the windward side of the southeast monsoon. The climate is warm, cool and humid, and its humidity is often above 80%. They are wet animals. Giant pandas are distributed in Minshan, Qionglai, Liangshan, Daxiangling, Xiaoxiangling and Qinling, spanning 45 counties (cities) in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, with more than 20,000 habitats and a population of about 1600, of which more than 80% are distributed in Sichuan. Their active areas are mostly in ravines, mountainside depressions, river valley terraces and so on. , generally in the gentle slope terrain below 20. These places have lush forests, good bamboo growth, relatively stable temperature, good hidden conditions and abundant food and water resources. Giant pandas live in dense bamboo forests at an altitude of 2,600-3,500 meters. The air here is thin and foggy all the year round, and the temperature is below 20℃. Other factors will also affect the distribution and density of giant pandas in the wild: topography, water distribution, whether there are hiding places and nests for feeding cubs, mountain conditions and so on. Human disturbance is the main factor affecting the distribution of giant pandas at present. Giant pandas are not afraid of cold and humidity and never hibernate. Even if the temperature is -4- 14℃, they still walk through the pressed bamboo bushes. They are not afraid of humidity, and always love to live in a humid world with humidity above 80%.
Living habits and behavioral characteristics
Giant pandas spend half their eating time every day, and most of the rest time in sleep. In the wild, giant pandas sleep for 2-4 hours between meals. Lying flat, lying on the side, prone, stretching or curling are their favorite sleep styles. In the zoo, the keepers feed them regularly, twice a day, so the pandas spend the rest of their time resting. Giant pandas look cute even when they sleep. They are very flexible and can put their heavy bodies in various positions. My favorite posture is to support my legs on a tree and cover my eyes with my hands. The cutest characteristics of giant pandas are chubby body and slow walking style. This is because they live in an environment with sufficient food and no natural enemies, and do not need to act quickly. However, it is its slow movement that enables it to conserve energy to adapt to low-energy foods. They sometimes climb trees to spy on the situation, avoid intruders or take a nap. Giant pandas are good at climbing trees and love to play. Climbing a tree is generally a way for the weak to avoid the strong when approaching the marriage proposal period, or avoiding danger, or meeting each other. Pandas sometimes go down to valleys, string into houses in small villages or mountain villages, use pots and pans, especially round utensils, as toys, and then discard them in Shan Ye after playing. Sometimes they get along well with sheep, pigs and other domestic animals and live with them. Under normal circumstances, giant pandas are always docile. When you meet someone for the first time, you usually cover your front paws with a mask or lower your head to hide your true feelings. They rarely take the initiative to attack other animals or people, and they always avoid them when they meet in the wild. But once she becomes a mother, her baby is sacred. Even if she cares about visiting, she will be angry with her mother, showing her teeth and touching her hands. Sometimes they also like to make some modifications and other fitness activities. You can straighten your body like a cat, stretch your body flexibly by stretching forward and lifting it half-way, or yawn after waking up. If you get wet or cross a river, you can shake off the water like a dog. In the wild, giant pandas usually have conflicts during estrus, especially when three or four males pursue a female in estrus. Sometimes, females and males also fight. In the zoo, their fight is usually because water, food or a giant panda occupy a good site.
For the giant panda population, the visible signals are meaningless: the round face lacks expression, the tail is short, there is no crown or brown hair to spread out, and the ears can stand up and down but not flexible enough. This is because pandas live in dense and foggy bamboo forests on high mountains all the year round and can't see each other. Most of the communication of giant pandas is realized through the odor traces left by their habitats. When they want to meet, usually in estrus, they will find each other by scent marks. Once they met, they turned to voice communication. Giant pandas rely on their rich "language" to express emotions ranging from deep affection to anger. Silence is another way of communication. When giant pandas are playing, or just being friendly, they don't make any noise. This sound rule can help people judge the behavior of most pandas seen in zoos. Marking territory with smell is the secret of keeping peace in bamboo forests. Giant pandas paint the secretion of perianal glands on posts, stumps, walls, ground and places they often pass by. These scent marks can make them avoid each other or bring them together. In estrus, they smell strange pandas and walk away. In estrus, the smell of a female panda may indicate that she is ready to mate and wants to attract males. There are several ways to mark giant pandas. They are usually labeled with urine, or a mixture of urine and perianal gland secretions. When they mark, they shake their heads and open their mouths. After being marked, they will peel off the bark or leave scratches at the marked place to attract the attention of other pandas.
The eating habit of the giant panda is one of its strangest and interesting habits, because it lives almost entirely by eating bamboo. Among more than 50 plants naturally ingested in the wild, bamboo accounts for more than half, accounting for 99% in the whole year. Among them, 7 species such as Fargesia gigantea and Fargesia gigantea are the favorites. Although with the change of eating habits, some organs have also changed accordingly, especially teeth, whose molars are very developed and the most powerful among animals, and their structures are relatively complex, close to omnivorous animals, and the differentiation of cracked teeth is not obvious, while canine teeth and premolars are developed without alveolar space. The upper incisors are arranged in an arc shape, the lower incisors are arranged in a horizontal row, and the second pair of lower incisors are often located at the back, which seems to form a double row. This phenomenon is more obvious in the skulls of the elderly. The root of canine teeth is thicker, while the crown is shorter and the tip is not pointed. The first pair of premolars is very small, and it is common to lose one or both sides. The front edges of the second pair of premolars are inclined inward, and the rear edges are inclined outward in a semi-inclined position. The crowns of the third and fourth premolars are prismatic, three on the outside and two on the inside. Molar teeth are called mound teeth, and their chewing surfaces are extremely wide, generally rectangular, and the tips of teeth have nodules of different sizes. The upper molar has four big teeth tips, and the last upper molar is particularly large, extending backward to the back of the cheekbones, and the crown surface has complex small prismatic odontoid processes. The posterior lower molar is small, and its tip is not obvious, which is located inside the front edge of mandibular branch. The last upper molar of Carnivora is generally located at the front edge of the base of coronoid process, but the backward movement of giant panda molar can limit the left and right swing of upper and lower molars and enhance the chewing effect, but the molar effect is limited. The wear of molars is different from top to bottom. The wear of the lower molars starts from the outside, and the wear of the upper molars starts from the inside, because the distance between the left and right upper molars is greater than the distance between the rows of lower molars. Generally speaking, its teeth are different from those of other carnivores, but very similar to those of herbivorous ungulates. The five claws on its front palm coexist, and there is a sixth finger, which is a powerful one that grows from it and plays the role of "thumb". This "thumb" can cooperate with the other five fingers, so that it can grasp bamboo well, even grab things and climb trees. But it still retains a simple digestive tract, without a complicated stomach dedicated to storing food, and without giant bacteria or ciliates used to ferment cellulose in plants into absorbable nutrients in the gastrointestinal tract. In order to get the required nutrition, the only way is to eat and pull quickly, while eating and pulling. An adult giant panda weighing 65,438+000 kilograms spends 65,438+02-65,438+06 hours a day in spring, eating 65,438+00-65,438+08 kilograms of bamboo leaves and stems, or 30-38 kilograms of fresh bamboo shoots, while discharging 65,438. Panda's food is poor in nutrition and can't have much energy storage. In order to conserve energy, activities that consume too much energy must be controlled. So it likes to walk in gentle places and avoid climbing. Usually, they only move in a small range, using smells, sounds and so on. To transmit information without direct contact with each other. Besides bamboo, giant pandas eat some weeds and other plants, but they eat very little. In addition, he is not a real "monk". When it comes to opportunity, there must be a piece of "meat" to restore the nature of its ancestors. For example, there is a kind of mouse in its habitat, commonly known as "bamboo valve", which eats the underground roots of arrow bamboo and causes it to die. But its meat is tender and delicious, rich in nutrition, as a local proverb says: "There are bamboo slips in the sky and underground". Giant pandas have a clever way to deal with bamboo rats. Once it smells or finds its trail, it can quickly find its own cave, then spray air into the cave with its mouth and beat it hard with its front paws, forcing the bamboo rat to flee in a hurry. The giant panda seized the opportunity to hold down the mouse with its front paws, tear off the skin of the mouse and eat all the meat. If the bamboo rat doesn't come out of the hole, the giant panda will dig a hole and rob it until it is captured. Although giant pandas also have the potential for carnivores to eat meat, they rarely prey on animals or animal carcasses. This is not because it doesn't like meat, but because it lacks opportunities. Because there are few large carnivores in the distribution area of giant pandas, there are not many residual corpses left for them to eat. If it often catches mice and other small animals, the nutrition it gets is often not enough to compensate for the energy it consumes. Therefore, giant pandas can only eat a little meat occasionally, and most of the time they rely on bamboo to maintain their lives step by step, becoming animals that follow the rules and live on bamboo all their lives. Giant pandas in captivity mainly feed on one or more bamboos in low mountains and flat dams, and the supplementary food is concentrated feed mainly based on cereals. Bamboo is the key to the growth, health and normal reproduction of giant pandas. With the improvement of giant panda breeding technology, people gradually realize that alpine or subalpine bamboo, which provides pandas with favorite food, plays an important role in their health and normal reproduction. Coupled with the improvement of traffic conditions. Giant pandas in captivity can also provide a large number of bamboos that they like to eat in high mountains or subalpine mountains. The giant panda's food is not a single arrow bamboo. In fact, there are many kinds of bamboo that giant pandas like to eat, and arrow bamboo is just one of the more common ones. These bamboos grow under the canopy of subalpine dark coniferous forest, mountain dark coniferous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest and mountain evergreen broad-leaved forest for a long time, and are distributed between 700-3500 meters above sea level. Giant pandas in different mountains have different staple foods: bamboo. The diet of giant pandas changes with the mountain and season, and they eat different kinds of bamboo or different parts of the same kind of bamboo in different seasons. I like to eat different kinds of bamboo shoots in spring and summer, mostly bamboo leaves in autumn and bamboo poles in winter. The common edible bamboo species of giant pandas in the wild are: cold arrow bamboo, August bamboo, true bamboo, big leaf bamboo, Indocalamus, arrow bamboo, short cone jade bamboo, northern back jade bamboo, Erzhu, yellow bamboo, rough bamboo, Phyllostachys pubescens and so on. The edible bamboos commonly used for captive giant pandas are Bambusa Bambusa, Dendrocalamus spinulosus, Bambusa bambusa, Phyllostachys angustifolia and Phyllostachys pubescens, also known as Meng Zongzhu, Lengzhu, Juzhu, Bambusa bambusa, Chimonobambusa, etc. In addition to bamboo, captive giant pandas can also get a small amount of concentrated feed, fruits, vitamins and trace element additives. This is mainly because captive giant pandas can't eat freely, and their nutritional intake is insufficient or unbalanced. Therefore, additions and supplements are made manually. The main raw materials of concentrated feed are corn, soybean, rice and wheat. After cleaning, these raw materials are processed by special technology according to a certain proportion and become the food of giant pandas. All foods of giant pandas have strict selection criteria, and safety and nutrition tests are needed before use. Only food that meets the requirements can be finally provided to giant pandas.
How to eat giant pandas need to spend nearly half of their time eating every day. The digestive tract of giant pandas retains the characteristics of their ancestors, similar to carnivores, with relatively short digestive tract, sharp canine teeth, single stomach, no cecum, relatively sharp claws and developed meat pads. In the process of slow evolution, it gradually evolved into the staple food of high-fiber bamboo, and evolved some structural characteristics that adapted to bamboo, such as masseter muscle and protruding teeth. In addition to five toes, the front paws have evolved into fake thumbs, which is convenient for holding bamboo. Giant pandas spend most of their time collecting, preparing food and eating with their hands and feet. They don't care where they are-sitting, lying flat or sideways-they just peel bamboo poles and eat bamboo leaves. 99% of panda's food is bamboo, and sometimes it may be some wild flowers, vines, weeds, honey and even some meat. The panda's staple food is bamboo, and he also likes to drink water. Most giant pandas live near streams and running water, so they can drink fresh water nearby. Giant pandas drink water at least once a day. In some places, although food is abundant and water resources are scarce, it is difficult to find giant pandas. In winter, when the running water in mountainous areas is frozen by ice, some giant pandas may travel long distances, go down the ditch, drink water in the valley, and then return home because they miss the hidden conditions and food base of their homes. Giant pandas always seek water from far and near, and walk out of an obvious drinking path day after day. When they reach the stream, they drink water by licking and sucking. If the stream is covered with thin ice or gravel, they break the ice with their front paws, or dig a shallow pit about 25×20 cm with their paws to lick the water. Giant pandas mainly eat bamboo, but bamboo is difficult to digest and absorb. In this way, the energy intake of the giant panda is greatly limited, and all its activities should take into account the energy intake as much as possible and consume as little energy as possible. With the change of climate and food distribution, giant pandas have the habit of vertical migration. In summer, they go up the mountain to drive bamboo shoots for food, but in autumn and winter, the snow in the mountains moves down to the middle and low mountains. The panda's digestion and utilization rate of bamboo is low, and the food stays in the body for a short time, so it takes a lot of eating and fast discharge to get enough energy to meet its needs. According to the different parts where giant pandas eat bamboo in different seasons, the daily intake is roughly as follows: bamboo shoots are 23-40 kg; Bamboo leaves10-18 kg; Bamboo pole 17 kg. Giant pandas are very clever animals, which is manifested in their excellent feeding strategies. They not only choose the local bamboo species with the best nutritional value, but also give priority to the parts with the highest nutritional value. The order of feeding is bamboo shoots, tender bamboos and bamboo poles. Literature source: Giant Panda (Carnivora Xiong Ke Giant Panda) _ Baidu.