Giant panda

Ailuropoda melanoleuca

A bear that lives on bamboo

Numbers

Weight: 310 lbrange 175-440 lb; Wikidata reports 259 lb and 3.7 ounces, which is the birth weight
Length: 61 inrange 48 to 72 in
Height: 30 inrange 24 to 35 inches
Lifespan: 35 yearsusually up to 35-40 years
Bamboo eaten every day: 90 lbalmost the only food
Fertile hours in a year: 24 hoursthe breeding period lasts 1-3 weeks
Birth weight: 3,5 ozone nine-hundredth of the mother's weight

it feeds almost exclusively on bamboo and can eat up to ninety pounds of it in a single day.
the false thumb is not a finger but an enlarged wrist bone, and Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay about it.
about four million years ago a gene mutation took away its ability to taste the savory flavor of meat.
the ears of the giant panda twitch back and forth every single time the animal chews on bamboo.
a newborn cub weighs one nine-hundredth of its mother, which is about four ounces compared to two hundred pounds.
the female is fertile for only twenty-four hours each year, during a breeding season that lasts one to three weeks.
pandas living in the Qinling Mountains are light brown and white rather than black and white, with larger molars.
it split from other bears nineteen million years ago, which is why scientists often call it a living fossil.
the first giant panda born in captivity was a female named Ming-Ming, born at the Beijing Zoo in 1963.
in 1975 the simultaneous flowering of all remaining bamboo species left entire populations of giant pandas without food.

Five questions about this animal. Pick an answer and find out if it is the right one.

Question 1 of 5

What is the false thumb of the giant panda?

Question 2 of 5

Why does the giant panda eat very little meat?

Question 3 of 5

How long is a female giant panda fertile each year?

Question 4 of 5

What happens to bamboo after it blooms?

Question 5 of 5

Which family does the giant panda belong to?

Experiment 1

Fill a backpack with twenty pounds of heavy books, then imagine carrying four of them at once to equal the weight of bamboo eaten in a single day.

Experiment 2

Measure four ounces of flour on a kitchen scale to see how little a newborn panda cub weighs, which is nine hundred times less than its mother.

Experiment 3

Circle just one single day on your wall calendar to visualize the brief twenty-four hour window when a female panda is able to get pregnant.