Here are 20 kickass and interesting facts about Giant Pandas.
1-5 Facts
1. A panda once noticed that pregnant pandas get special treatment, so she copied the behavior of pregnant pandas to get extra bamboo. – Source
2. All pandas in the world are on loan from China, and when a baby panda is born, by agreement, it is sent back to China to help expand the gene pool. The baby pandas are shipped back by FedEx. – Source
3. The giant panda has all the necessary equipment for a meat based diet but it lost a gene that codes for the umami receptor. It has no taste for it and will happily live on bamboo. – Source
4. One of the reasons why it is so hard to get pandas to mate is that the female panda is only “in the mood” for a short period in the spring; their sexual interest lasts just 24-72 hours per year. – Source
5. Initially, the primary method of breeding giant pandas was by artificial insemination, as they seemed to lose interest in mating when they were captured. This led scientists to try extreme methods, such as showing them videos of pandas mating and giving the males Viagra. – Source
6-10 Facts
6. A group of pandas is called an embarrassment. – Source
7. Pandas are biologically carnivorous and derive little energy from bamboo, they eat between 20 and 30 pounds of bamboo a day. Consequently, they also defecate up to 40 times a day. – Source
8. One of the main reasons WWF founder Sir Peter Scott chose a panda as the organization’s logo was to minimize printing costs as it needed just black and white. – Source
9. There are Panda Nannies in China. They get paid $32,000 annually and have meals, room and board covered, all to take care of baby pandas. – Source
10. China has practiced a form of gift exchange that goes back to the 7th Century where a Panda is given away for the purpose of diplomatic relations. This practice is known as “Panda Diplomacy”. – Source
11-15 Facts
11. Teddy Roosevelt was the first westerner to shoot a Giant Panda. – Source
12. Killing a panda was punishable by death in China before 1997 – Source
13. A female giant panda refused to mate with male pandas because she had become sexually attracted to a Russian zookeeper and would fully “present” herself to the human. – Source
14. Keeping pandas in a zoo is expensive. A panda costs five times more to keep than the next most expensive animal, an elephant. – Source
15. The Scientific name of the giant panda is “Ailuropoda melanoleuca” which means black and white cat-foot. – Source
16-20 Facts
16. In 1936, Ruth Harkness brought back the first live giant panda to the US, “not in a cage, or on a leash, but wrapped in her arms” – Source
17. Every giant panda left in existence belongs to China. The pandas in captivity (and any baby pandas that might be born there) China loans at the price of $1 million a year. Much of these profits are used in conservation efforts, thereby contributing to the survival of the species. – Source
18. Pandas have five fingers on their paws and a sixth “thumb” that they evolved to handle bamboo better. – Source
19. In 1987, spots were painted on a Sun bear by a zoo in Tainan, Taiwan in order to fool visitors into thinking that they had a Giant Panda – Source
20. Sichuan tribal people believed that drinking panda urine will melt accidentally swallowed needle. – Source
