The Giant Panda

According to a story told in China, the giant panda was once all white. Then one day a little girl saw a panda being attacked by a leopard. The girl tried to rescue the panda, but the leopard leaped on her and killed her. The panda escaped but was filled with grief for the girl, and he summoned all the world's pandas to come to her funeral. The sorrowing pandas wore black arm bands, hugged their bodies for consolation, and pressed their arms against their ears to muffle the cries of the mourning. The color from their arm bands dyed their fur, and ever afterward pandas have had black eye patches, ears, arms, and legs and a black band across their shoulders.

These strikingly patterned and dearly loved pandas are now an endangered species. Fossil evidence indicates that the giant panda has been on earth for three million years and once lived in much of eastern China and Burma. The panda's range increased and decreased periodically as climatic conditions changed, but since the mid-1800's it has shrunk dramatically. For many years people living in panda habitat hunted them, and even today pandas are accidentally killed in snares set for musk deer. In 1962, the Chinese government banned all panda hunting, and now the species is considered a national treasure that must be helped rather than harmed. The penalty for killing a panda even unintentionally is a two-year jail sentence.

Despite its protected status, the giant panda, among the best loved of all mammals, is now

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er larger contiguous pieces of panda habitat." Today the giant panda's range is limited to six small areas totaling about 11,000 square miles in three Chinese provinces along the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. Actual panda habitat - cool, damp bamboo forests at altitudes of 6,000 feet to 12,000 feet - is even smaller, only about one-fifth of the total range. China has established 12 panda reserves encompassing 2,300 square miles, where about 60 percent of wild pandas live. Many isolated populations of giant pandas number fewer than 50 animals (some fewer than 20), which presents other threats: random changes in sex ratio and age distribution and the danger of inbreeding. Inbreeding may lead to reduced fertility and a higher mortality, and the resulting smaller populations are more vulnerable to outbreaks of disease. Scientists believe communities of fewer than 100 pandas represent serious inbreeding problems, and only three communities are larger than 100. To ensure the giant panda's survival, captive breeding programs may prove essential. Most captive pandas - currently about 90 - live in Chinese zoos and at the facilities of China's Ministry of Forestry. A handful exist in Western zoos and other Asian zoos.

Category: Science - T