Giant Panda

Many people like pandas because they look so cute and cuddly. I don't know why someone would even want to hunt a panda. Wild panda bears live in central China. A newborn panda looks like a bald hamster or a naked mole rat. It is very tiny at first. Most pandas have only 1 cub, but if they have 2 at a time, they will abandon one of them because they can only care for 1 at a time.

Diet: Pandas eat mostly bamboo-about 25 pounds a day, actually. But they will occasionally eat meat such as eggs or fish so they are classified as carnivores or meat eaters even though 99% of their diet is herbivore or plant eating. They also like honey just like other bears.

Relatives: the red panda, also from central China, is closely related to the giant panda. It is much smaller and looks more like a raccoon. For many years scientists believed that the giant panda was a part of the raccoon family. Now testing shows that they are really bears.

Where are they?: There are about 2000 giant pandas living in the wild in China and studies say that their numbers are growing. But there are 9 living here in the United States on loan from China. One baby panda born here at the San Diego Zoo in California also belongs to China. They are also at the National Zoo in Washington, DC; the Atlanta Zoo in Georgia. And two new pandas are located at the Memphis Zoo in Tennessee. And you can see Red Pandas at the Nashville Zoo in Tennessee also. I went with my family a few years ago to see Lun Lun and Yang Yang in Atlanta, Georgia. The zoo is located, by the way, in Grant Park. They were really cool! Here are some photos we took. See if you can guess which one is the panda and which one is my dad. If you live near one of these zoos with pandas, it is certainly worth the trip to go see them.