Can you eat pandas

For the most part, the ratio of protein to fat and carbohydrates in the feces was similar to, or lower than, the ratio in the bamboo. That meant the bears were absorbing and using the protein they worked so hard to find.

Silvia Pineda-Munoz, a diet ecology researcher at Georgia Tech, said the findings show that pandas are resourceful. The work also shows that classifying an animal as herbivore or carnivore is more complex than one might assume. She joined the newsroom in and spent several years working on the criminal justice team. She was also part of the team that was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the Conception boat fire off the Channel Islands.

This scientist is finding out. All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Three smuggled pelts were reported seized by Hong Kong customs authorities in , and China arrested for panda hunting in , recovering pelts. Although intentionally harming a panda is now unthinkable, other bear species do not enjoy the same protections.

Chinese today still consume the bile extracted from moon bears, sun bears, and brown bears; the substance is believed to be therapeutic and is an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Yet bile extraction is a painful and invasive process, and some bear bile farms keep bears locked in tiny cages for years at a time. She told Foreign Policy that it is a "source of great sadness" to see other bears in China "maligned and cruelly exploited in bear farms across the country.

Pandas and other bears "share so many similarities but are treated so very differently," she said. Only a few have dared argue against trying to save the pandas, calling the effort doomed and a waste of money. It spends a fortune on panda preservation, from breeding parks to research, but also earns millions of dollars annually by leasing the animals to overseas zoos and by displaying them as tourist attractions at home.

Over the past several decades, Chinese scientists have developed and honed the difficult techniques required to breed pandas in captivity, in making a breakthrough that may help pandas bred in captivity to return to the wild.

Pandas are frequently born in pairs but mothers struggle to care for both cubs; the simple but powerful innovation has been to let other captive panda females foster one of the cubs. Pandas are the face of animal rights but in the popular imagination, they are not really bears at all — they are cartoon characters, a creation of movies like Kungfu Panda , the fuzzy panda hats sold at tourist attractions around China, and even Fuwa the Panda, one of the five mascots of the Beijing Olympics.

People were dumbfounded when Gu Gu, a male panda in the Beijing Zoo, attacked a man who ventured into his enclosure in January, Imagining pandas roaming free in their natural environs is also a challenge because there are only around 1, wild pandas left.

Seeing one can be a major event; in March, villagers in Sichuan screamed and ran toward a panda with their phones and cameras out when he scrambled through their mountain hamlet, capturing this video. There are signs that panda love may be spreading to other species. In June, animal rights activists overran the annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival, sometimes physically preventing those transporting dogs to enter the city.

As for the scaled pangolins, China announced in April that anti-trafficking laws could be interpreted to punish not just poachers, but anyone who knowingly eats an endangered animal.

Violators could spend up to ten years in prison. The interpretation applied to different endangered species, including tigers and golden monkeys. By attacking Chinese appetites, the government might finally be able to curb demand. She is the director of research at China Six, a New York-based consulting firm. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort.

Read: The life, times, and departure of Bao Bao the panda. These results should help to counter the tiresome myth that pandas are evolutionary dead ends : lazy, poorly adapted creatures that eat deficient diets, are inept at sex, and should be allowed to go extinct.

Pandas have beautifully adapted to eat an extremely plentiful food source—bamboo—and they go to great, careful lengths to get exactly the right balance of nutrients.

The same goes for labels such as generalist or specialist. The former implies versatility, and the latter, inflexibility. But a generalist animal might eat a wide range of foods precisely because it needs to keep its nutritional levels within narrow boundaries. Its versatility in choices might reflect a hidden, underlying inflexibility. Samantha Price of Clemson University wants to know what kind of nutrient levels other bear species shoot for, especially because their diets are so varied.

Do they all resemble the panda, or do they differ? Even in these species, appearances can be deceiving.