Panda facts I

>> Throughout history, most regions of China were home to giant pandas, including Zhoukoudian in Beijing, the site of the prehistoric Peking Man; Guangxi, Guangdong and Yunnan provinces; and nearby regions in Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

>> In China, most giant pandas live in the mountains of Qinling, Minshan, Qionglai, Daxiangling and Xiaoxiangling. Their habitation area covers about 2.3 million hectares. Among them, 80 percent live in Sichuan province. The rest reside in Shaanxi and Gansu province.

>> Generally speaking, wild pandas live on mountains at an altitude above 2,500 meters.

>> The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is located in Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan. It is the world's most famous agency for giant panda migration research and protection. It is also the world's best place to watch giant pandas.

>> Giant pandas feed on breast milk before ablactation.

>> Pandas eat nearly 60 kinds of bamboo, favoring twenty-seven kinds specifically.

>> Giant pandas eat different kinds of bamboo and different parts of bamboo (such as bamboo shoots, leaves and stems) in different seasons. The bamboo shoot is most popular to pandas as it contains a high portion of water, sugar and nutrients.

>> Pandas favor kiwifruit, aquatic plants, weeds, shrubs and trees.

>> Breeders usually provide giant pandas with corn bread and fruit for nutrition supplementation.

>> A giant panda's pregnancy lasts from 83 to 200 days.

>> The body of a newborn giant panda is pink and spans 10 centimeters, which makes its tail seem particularly long.

>> An average newborn giant panda weighs between 51 grams and 225 grams, less than one-thousandth of its mother's weight.

>> Four to five days after its birth, a giant panda's ears and eye sockets begin to gradually grow darker. After 30 to 38 days, it begins to have the characteristic appearance of other giant pandas.

>> A mother panda has four nipples for babies to drink nutrient-rich milk. Panda breast milk also contains various substances that help newborns resist disease.

>> A mother giant panda has a strong sense of motherhood. She will take care of her baby all day long and will abstain from eating for an entire week.

>> Baby pandas begin to walk at around 90 to 120 days old.

>> Wild juvenile giant pandas leave their mother and live independently when they are 1.5 to 2 years old.

>> A giant panda relies on its sense of smell to identify the quality of bamboo.

>> An adult giant panda can run very fast, especially in a bamboo forest. Its speed has never been measured.

>> Adult giant pandas are strong enough to fight against their natural enemies in the wild, including the Asian golden cat and leopard.

>> A giant panda's fur is thick, so it has better resistance to cold than heat.

>> A wild adult giant panda spends about 16 hours finding and eating bamboo, leaving the remaining time for walking, sleeping and resting. A human-fed giant panda usually spends 8 to 10 hours eating bamboo.

>> A wild juvenile giant panda usually leaves its mother and lives independently at 1.5 to 2 years old. A human-fed giant panda is weaned about five months to 1.5 years after birth, or sometimes at the age of two.

>> A female giant panda sexually matures when it is about 5 years old, a male matures at around 7 years old.