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Giant Panda
China's black-and-white icon — a bear that lives almost entirely on bamboo, and a symbol of wildlife conservation the world over.
How to spot it
A stocky bear with a striking coat — white body, black legs, black ears and famous black eye-patches. Its round face is powered by big jaw muscles for chewing bamboo, and a special wrist bone works like a thumb to grip the stems.
Where it lives
The cool, damp bamboo forests of the mountains of central China, mainly Sichuan. It lives high up among dense stands of bamboo, moving up and down the slopes with the seasons.
What it eats
Though built like a meat-eater, it lives almost entirely on bamboo, feeding for many hours a day and getting through 12–38 kg of it because bamboo is so low in nutrition. It very occasionally takes small animals or eggs.
Behaviour & life
Mostly solitary and quiet. Cubs are born tiny, pink and utterly helpless — about the size of a stick of butter — and grow slowly under the mother's care. Pandas breed slowly, which makes recovery hard.
Conservation
A global conservation symbol and the emblem of WWF. Decades of habitat protection and breeding lifted its status from Endangered to Vulnerable — a real, if fragile, success. In India it is seen only in zoos.
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