Wild Things: Giant Pandas, an Ancient Ibis and More...
Panda-friendly forests, one bizarre bird and foxes on junk food
- By Arcynta Ali Childs, T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Laura Helmuth and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, March 2011
Giant Panda sitting in vegetation eating bamboo. (Pete Oxford / Minden Pictures)
What do pandas want? Bamboo, first of all; that’s almost all they eat. But they also need old trees. A Chinese Academy of Science-led study of four years of observations from across 70 percent of the giant panda’s range, the largest panda habitat data set ever compiled, showed that they are most likely to live in old-growth forest. That may be because only mature trees have cavities large enough for dens.
Learn more about giant pandas at the Encyclopedia of Life.
Additional Sources
“Whistling in caterpillars (Amorpha juglandis, Bombycoidea): sound-producing mechanism and function,” Veronica L. Bura et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, December 8, 2010
“Stable isotopes evaluate exploitation of anthropogenic foods by the endangered San Joaquin kit fox (Vulpes macrotis mutica),” Seth D. Newsome et al., Journal of Mammalogy, December 2010
“The bizarre wing of the Jamaica flightless ibis Xenicibis xympithecus: a unique vertebrate adaptation,” Nicholas R. Longrich and Storrs L. Olson, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, January 5, 2011
“Old-growth forest is what giant pandas really need,” Zejun Zhang et al., Biology Letters, January 12, 2011
“One haploid parent contributes 100% of the gene pool for a widespread species in northwest North America,” E. F. Karlin et al., December 28, 2010
Comments