Despite the fact on how big pandas have been portrayed, they are only the size of a butter stick when they are born. This is about 1/900 of the size of an average adult panda. Although they start out this small, they can become about 4 feet tall and 330 pounds.
The giant panda's natural habitat is located in China. China has most of the panda population. (see map to right) The reason why most of the panda population is in China is because the pandas main food is bamboo, which is mostly located in China. The while eating, the pandas spread bamboo seeds to other areas, so more can grow, kind of how bees spread pollen from flower to flower so that more flowers can grow. These critters have to eat about 26 - 84 pounds of bamboo a day! Now there are only about 1,864 Giant Pandas left in the wild. These adorable creatures used to be endangered, but now are vulnerable thanks to the help of the WWF. Although they moved up from endangered to vulnerable, they are still very low in numbers. |