The panda is a cute black and white teddy bear with a raccoon-like tail that sneaks up quietly like a cat. The pandas that touch people so much are now under the protection of the World Wildlife Fund as one of the endangered species.
Pandas in their natural environment
The number of pandas in the world is constantly decreasing due to the low birth rate, as well as due to the fact that many representatives live in captivity - in zoos, research centers.
Previously, pandas inhabited snow-covered areas, where their black and white color helped to camouflage and hide from predators. However, now pandas live in warmer regions, and there are almost no predators that hunted pandas. So pandas, similar to teddy bears, feed mainly on bamboo. It is with such a specific diet that their habitats are associated. In one day, the panda eats on average 20 kg of bamboo to replenish its energy reserves. After all, pandas weigh from 50 to 150 kg, but only a born panda cub weighs less than 1% of the mother's weight - only 100 grams.
In 2000, the first panda gave birth to a baby in captivity, destroying the hypothesis that captive pandas do not breed.
If earlier pandas moved to places where there was a lot of bamboo, now this is the main problem for the existence of pandas. Due to the clearing of places for living by people, the places for possible habitation of these animals have decreased by 50%. Now the wild pandas can be found only in the mountainous bamboo forests of China, as well as in northern Vietnam.
Due to the growth of China's population, there are only three places left in the country where pandas can still be found: the areas of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. The province of Sichuan is surrounded on all sides by mountains, where animals live as in their own little world. A little more than 700 of them survived in this area, that is, 45% of the entire population on Earth.
For the first time, a panda was taken away from its habitat in the 6th century, when one of the Chinese empresses presented two pandas to the Japanese ruler.
Pandas in captivity
However, the Chinese government leases pandas for zoos in different countries. So the panda can be seen not only in China, but also in the Schönbrunn zoos in Austria, in the cities of Atlanta, Memphis, San Diego in the USA, in the Adelaide Zoo in Australia, in the Spanish capital Madrid, Berlin in Germany, in the Chiang Mai Zoo in Thailand, Canada, Mexico and Japan.
For renting one panda, any zoo in the world can pay 1 million dollars a year and get a beautiful individual for its collection of animals (rent is issued for 10 years).
In Russia, the last time a panda could be seen was in the summer of 2001, in the days of Beijing, when 9-year-old Wen-Wen and 4-year-old Ben-Ben were brought to Moscow from China, by the way, bamboo was brought from Adler to feed the pandas.
