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🐾 Giant Pandas
Black-and-white bears that spend almost all day eating bamboo — and have a secret extra thumb to hold it.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 · via Wikimedia Commons
📍 Where is it?
📍 Chengdu, China — see it on the big map →
Giant pandas live in the misty mountain forests of Sichuan, in China. They are easy to spot with their black ears, black eye patches and white faces — like bears wearing masks.
Pandas are bears, but they eat almost only bamboo. Bamboo is not very filling, so a panda has to eat for 10 to 16 hours every day, munching through up to 38 kilograms of bamboo. To hold the stems, pandas have a special trick: a wrist bone that works like an extra thumb, so they can grip bamboo like we grip a pencil.
Baby pandas are born tiny and pink, about the size of a stick of butter, with no fur at all. The research centre in Chengdu helps protect pandas and teaches people about them. Wild pandas are rare — there are fewer than 2,000 left in the mountains — but their numbers are slowly growing.
🤩 Wow fact!
A giant panda spends 10 to 16 hours a day eating bamboo — and its wrist bone works like a sixth finger to grip the stems.
🧠 Quiz time!
What do giant pandas eat almost all day?