• Question: why do paNDAS EAT BAMPOO?

    Asked by madeleineh to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 14 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      I didn’t know the answer to this but I looked it up cos I was interested!

      Panda’s eat bamboo because they can! Their natural habitat contains lots of bamboo so it makes sense that they would eat it. BUT I didn’t know that because bamboo has very little nutritional value, pandas have to eat up to 38kg of it a day, and eats for 14 hours of each day!!

      Thanks for the questions – I’ve learned something today too! 🙂

    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Panda’s eat bamboo because this is what they have in their natural habitat. Apparently panda’s actually descend from meat-eaters and if they are given meat they will eat it but prefer bamboo! Bamboo contains lots of water too

    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      It was a really poor lifestyle choice that they’ve evolved to. As we know, they’re a bear, which are normally carnivores. For some reason they started eating bamboo which isn’t very nutritious at all! Just goes to show that evolution doesn’t aim for anything, if it works (even if it’s really inefficient) it can happen!

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