Panda Bear facts

While investigating facts about Panda Bear, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Breeding panda bears is extremely hard and requires a global cooperation because more than half of male pandas exhibit no sexual drive and female pandas are fertile only up to three days a year. One of the methods to encourage the mating pandas is "panda porn".

There's only 8 species of bears in the world: brown bears, Asian black bears, American black bears, sun bears, sloth bears, spectacled bears, polar bears, and giant pandas.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 28 of the best facts about Panda Bear I managed to collect.

1. The panda's gut isn't suited to digesting bamboo and can only digest 17% of the bamboo it eats. Instead, it is more suited to eating meat, like other species of bears.

2. In 1825, the panda was given its name by a French zoologist. 76 years later, the name was lent to a black and white bear that was mistakenly thought to be a close relative. The giant panda’s name stuck, and the original panda became the lesser or red panda.

3. By using DNA, the Giant Panda which is often called a bear but has long been considered to belong to the racoon family, has been officialy placed in the Ursidae category with the 7 other Bear species.

4. Many of China's lottery winners have donned masks (and some even full costumes) when claiming their multi-million prizes. This has led to photos of people dressed as Baymax, yellow bears, and even a giant panda holding the novelty cheques of their winnings.

5. Bears and seals share a common ancestor under the infraorder Arctoidea, the same infraorder that also includes red pandas, skunks, wolverines and more in Musteloidea.

6. Giant pandas are not commonly featured in most of Chinese history. Despite bears appearing in Chinese art since ancient times, and bamboo being a favorite subject for Chinese painters, there are no known pre-20th-century artistic representations of giant pandas.

7. Is a red panda a bear?
   The name share they have with the giant panda doesn't mean they are closely related. The red pandas are often called esser panda, cat-bear, bear-cat, Himalayan raccoon, fox bear and firefox but they are not closely related to these anumals. At first red pandas were classified as relatives of raccoons in the Procyonidae family, because of physical similarities, such as the head, teeth and ringed tail. Later, because of some DNA similarities, they were classified as bears in the Ursidae family. Recent genetic research now places them in their own family, Ailuridae. They have no living relatives, and their nearest fossil ancestors lived 3 million to 4 million years ago.

8. The boreal forest is home to many large mammal species including black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, caribou, moose, reindeer, sheep, foxes, polar bears, giant pandas, wolverines, elk, mountain goats, wild boars, Siberian tigers, lemmings, and deer.

9. Pandas don"t hibernate like other bears.

10. The Himalayas are home to many species including wild goats, Tibetan sheep, musk deer, snow leapards, mountain goats, black bears, tigers, red pandas, and giant pandas, as well as a variety of birds including the grey bushchat, hill partridge, and Himalayan bulbul.

What is true about panda bear?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

In 2010 Texas banned the book "Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See?" from famous children's author Bill Martin Jr. after confusing him for leftist philosopher Bill Martin.

Contrary to their reputation, Panda bears are pretty dangerous and are supposed to have an intense 'sex drive'. As long as they're in nature, that is. - source

Because of their nutritionally poor diet consisting of only bamboo, Panda Bears have to eat so much of it that they end up pooping about 40 times a day. - source

The Chinese name for the Giant Panda literally means "giant bear cat"

The closest living relative of seals are bears and animals like skunks and red pandas - source

In addition to trash pandas, raccoons are also referred to as wash bears, laundry bears and wash rats in European countries because of their habit of dunking food in water and rubbing it before eating.

The red panda is in the raccoon family while the giant panda is more closely related to bears.

Giant panda bears may actually be giant raccoons

Panda bears have actually become inherently dumber due to human influence.

China is the only country that can own pandas because they are the only country Pandas are native to. China merely loans the bears to other countries for money, favors, and diplomatic purposes.

Giant pandas ("panda bears") were long debated - and might still be - to be a type of raccoon. I knew there was some debate on whether they were a real bear (like koalas), but certainly not that the other category was raccoon...