The Giant Pandas by Ruby
Grade 5 • January 30, 2014
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Table of Contents
2
Description!
3
Range and Population!
4
Threats!
5
Solutions!
6
Bibliography!
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Introduction!
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Introduction What animal can peel a stalk of bamboo in less than a minute, eats between 20 and 40 pounds of bamboo in a day, is very playful, a great tree climber, and a strong swimmer? Its scientific name is ailuropoda melanoleuca which means black and white cat foot. In China, this animal’s name is translated as large bear cat. In fact, it is not a cat at all.
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Description !
They are black and white, with a large head, slit shaped
pupils, and a plump rounded body, with a short tail. The giant pandas body length is 5-6 feet, their height to the shoulder is
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24-31 inches. As a newborn club the giant panda weighs 2-5
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ounces. As an adult the giant panda weights 200-265 pounds. !
A newborn giant panda is helpless at first. and gets fed 16
times in a day. They open their eyes for the first time when they are 6 weeks old, and they walk at three months. A giant panda can live over 20 years in the wild or over 30 years in zoos, and their seasons of birth are late summer to fall. and a giant pandas matin season is spring . They first eat bamboo when they are one year old. The giant panda leaves home between 18 months and 2 years, and they can also have a cub at 6 years. their litter size is 1-2 cubs. Sometimes several males come to the female, they live in small groups or alone. !
So why do giant pandas eat so much bamboo? The reason is because bamboo has very
low nutritional values. so they have to eat a lot of it to keep themselves healthy. In fact about 99% of a giant panda’s diet is made up of bamboo. They will also eat animals that have
already died, wild parsnips, horse tails, willow leaves, and bark from trees.
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Range and Population !
The giant panda lives in six very small isolated, places in southwestern China. There are
about 1,000 giant pandas living in the wild an about 140 living in zoos.
They live in the
mountains and the wet forests. The cubs of the giant panda do not need a den. Their mother just carries them. !
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Threats In the past People liked to buy panda fur because of a traditional belief that their skins have magical powers according to the old Chinese folklore. One reason people liked to kill pandas is for hunting trophies, or they might kill because some hunters might have liked the idea of taking home a panda skin or a stuffed panda. !
One of the threats to the giant panda is loss of
habitat , and since giant pandas eat so much bamboo it is not good that a lot of people cut bamboo forests down for farms. !
The giant pandas main predator is humans,but
leopards will also eat panda cubs. The good thing is that some organizations such as WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) help save the giant panda by going into the bamboo forest and finding poachers and stop them from killing them. people then get all poachers looking for giant padas and all poachers in the bamboo forests out of it. http://www.fxdirectory.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Life-of-giant-pandas-in-the-bamboo-forest3.jpg
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Solutions
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People should not hurt them, kill them, bring a lot of of them together so they can have more cubs so there population can grow, also people should do as much as they can to help save the giant panda from extinction.
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Bibliography Claybourne, Anna. Giant Panda. Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2005. Print. Animals Under Threat. Portman, Michael. Pandas In Danger. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2012. Print.