Panda Facts

• Pandas belong to the bear family and have a coat of black and white fur, which is oily to protect them from the rain and cold of the mountains.

• When they are threatened, they climb trees and sit still, where their black fur blends in with the tree branches and their white fur blends in with the clouds

• Panda's live in the mountains of southwestern China, but their habitat has been steadily decreasing, as forests are removed in the valleys and the sides of valleys to make way for subsistence farms of the people who also live in the region. This leaves the pandas with mostly ridge tops as their habitat

• The main foods that pandas eat are stems, leaves, twigs, and bamboo shoots. However they also eat crocus and iris.

• To enable pandas to hold the bamboo better, they have a bone in their paw called the radial sesamoid, which is extra to five other digits in their paws.

• Pandas can also be found in a limited number of zoos around the world, including: Gardens of the Zoological Society of London; The Zoologischer Garten in the Tiergarten, West Berlin; Jardin de Vincennes, Paris; Zoo de la Casa de Campo, Madrid; The National Zoological Park, Washington, DC; Ueno Zoo, Tokyo; and in China, the Peking Zoo and the Che'ng-du Zoo, amongst others.

• Saving the Panda: China has set up the China Conservation Program (sponsored by the WWF), that conducts management, planning and training programs. For example, it has set up a captive breeding facility and research centre, and panda population and habitat surveys. Pandas have been protected since 1949 against hunting, and there are heavy penalties for poachers and rewards for those who help save the pandas.