History of the giant panda
- According to fossil evidence, the Pygmy Giant Panda, (Ailuropoda microta), is the earliest known ancestor of the Giant Panda.
- The two million year old skull found in the Jinyin Cave in Guangxi, southern China on June of 2007. It was half the size of the modern day Pandas, only measuring in 3ft in length, while today they're about 5ft. Research shows the Giant Panda evolved separately from the other bear species for 3 million years. Other ancestor evidence of the Giant Pandas have been found across eastern and southern China, Vietnam and Burma.
- Europeans didn't learn about the existence of them until 1869 when they were discovered by a French missionary
- They weren't brought to the Western Hemisphere until 1937, when American Ruth Harkness takes the baby panda, Su-Lin, to the U.S. where the cub immediately gains interest from the media.
- The Giant Panda use to roam specifically Burma and China. Unfortunately, now it only lives in a series of 13 wildlife reserves in three central and western Chinese provinces. But over the past 2,000 years, the giant panda population has been slowly decreasing due to habitat interference/destruction, and hunting.
- Since the year 1987, they've lost more than 30% of their habitat. Around this time, the Giant Panda was considered endangered. The Panda's digestive system is still that of a carnivore, but due to lack of food, they have adapted to bamboo, which is a main part of their diet. They still eat eggs, honey, small rodents, and insects, but 98% of their diet is bamboo.
- Today, the Giant Panda's population size consists of only 1,800 pandas with about 150 in captivity, this makes them one of the rarest mammals in the world.
- We are becoming more self-aware of our hunting and habitat-destroying ways over time, and science communities and projects have been created to help Giant Pandas, such as the Giant Panda Conservation Fund made by the Smithsonian's National Zoo.
- But still people continue to poach them. Their unusually-colored pelts are high in demand for their unique look and some believe it possesses supernatural powers and protection.
- In order to replenish the population, we are attempting to get the Pandas in captivity to reproduce but out of the 150 pandas in captivity, only 28% are breeding. But it is a positive sign for the slowly stabilizing population.