A panda's day, to scale
Bamboo is about one percent of the animal's body weight in nutrition and a panda kept the digestive system of a carnivore, so it has to solve the problem with volume. This is roughly how the twenty-four hours go.
- 14 hEating. Twelve to thirty-eight kilos of bamboo, chewed with the jaw muscles of an animal that was supposed to be hunting.
- 8 hSleeping, in pieces, usually two to four hours at a time and usually right next to the food.
- 1.5 hWalking to more bamboo. Not far. Bamboo does not run.
- 0.5 hFalling out of a tree, and the recovery period that follows.
Technical specification
Ailuropoda melanoleuca. The name translates as "black-and-white cat-foot", which nobody has ever explained to the panda.
- Intake
- 12β38 kg Of bamboo. Per day. Every day.
- Birth weight
- ~100 g About a stick of butter, and roughly one nine-hundredth of its mother.
- Adult weight
- 70β125 kg A 1,000-fold career change.
- Digits, front paw
- 6 Five fingers plus a wrist bone that grew into a thumb because bamboo needed holding.
- Diet that is bamboo
- 99% The other 1% is eggs, small rodents, and regret.
- Left in the wild
- ~1,864 Last full census. Downgraded from endangered to vulnerable in 2016, which they marked by eating.
Fact machine
One hundred yen, one capsule, one fact. All of them are true, which is the problem.
The red panda was named "panda" first, in 1825. The giant panda was described in 1869 and named after it. The red panda has never once let this go.
Gravity, and a panda's relationship with it
Pandas climb trees well and leave them badly. They are heavy, loose-jointed and unbothered, and a fall from a few metres is treated as an ordinary way to reach the ground. Try it. It is fine. It is always fine.
The panda is in the tree. The panda does not know how long this will last.
Falls survived 0 / 0
Two pandas, one stolen name
There is a bear called a panda and a small russet thing in the same forests called a panda, and only one of them was called it first.
| Giant pandaγΈγ£γ€γ’γ³γγγ³γ | Red pandaγ¬γγ΅γΌγγ³γ | |
|---|---|---|
| Called "panda" in | 1869 | 1825 β forty-four years earlier |
| Weight | 70β125 kg | 3β6 kg |
| Family | Bear (Ursidae) | Ailuridae β an entire family of one |
| Eats | Bamboo | Bamboo |
| Has a fake thumb | Yes | Also yes, evolved separately |
| Feelings about the other | None recorded | Strong |
The Japanese solved this by calling the red panda γ¬γγ΅γΌγγ³γ β "lesser panda" β which is technically a demotion and which the red panda, to its credit, has continued to ignore.