- Pandas traded their ancestors’ omnivorous diet for bamboo, which is low in nutrients.
- An adult panda can consume 45kg of bamboo per day and can eat for up to 15 hours per day.
- While wild pandas eat mostly vegetables, they are known to hunt small animals on occasion.
The fossil discovery of the panda in China has aided researchers in solving the mystery of how the giant species developed a “false thumb” and became the bear family’s only dedicated vegetarian.
A radial sesamoid, a greatly enlarged wrist bone found in southwest China’s Yunnan province, dates back about six million years.
It is the oldest known evidence of the modern giant panda’s false thumb that allows it to grip and break heavy bamboo stems, scientists wrote on a research paper published in the latest edition of the Scientific Reports.
The fossils belong to the now-extinct ancient relative of the panda called an Ailurarcto that lived in China six to eight million years ago.
“The giant panda is… a rare case of a large carnivore with a short, carnivorous digestive tract… that has become a dedicated herbivore,” Wang Xiaoming, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said.
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