Great Panda (pinyin: Xiong mao), Ailuropoda melanoleuca ( "Foot-and-white black cat") or summarized Panda, is a mammal that is usually classified into the bear family, Ursidae, native to central China. Great Panda lives in mountainous regions, like Sichuan and Tibet. In the half-century last 20, the panda became a symbol of China, and is now displayed in the gold country.
China was the name means "cat-bear," and also can be read reversed without changing the meaning. He was named the panda in the West because it is similar to the Red Panda, and formerly known as Bear Belang (Ailuropus melanoleucus).
Although taxonomists he is carnivorous, herbivorous food like most plants, nearly all the bamboo only. Technically, like many animals, the panda is omnivorous, because they are also known to eat eggs, and insects other than bamboo. Both these foods are sources of protein are needed. Her ears twitched as they chew.
Great Panda also was related to the Red Panda, but they named akrena habits seem like they are eating bamboo. Before his relationship with Red Panda was discovered in 1901, known as the Great Panda bears two-tone.
For decades, taxonomic classification of the panda is the right debate because both the Great Panda and Red Panda have characteristics such as bears and raccoons. However, genetic testing revealed that the Panda is a bear of a true and including family Ursidae. Closest relatives in the family is the Bear bespectacled bear in South America. It's still debatable whether the Red Panda family including Ursidaea tau rakut family, Procyonidae.
Big Panda including endangered species, threatened by habitat loss and very low birth rates, either in nature or in the cage. About 1,600 are believed still alive in the wild. Big Panda is the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the conservation organization.
Big Panda has claws bizarre, with the "thumb" and five fingers; "thumb" is actually a bone-modified wrist. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay on this topic, then use the title The Panda's Thumb for a book of essays.
Big Panda was first known in the Western world in 1869 by French missionary Armand David (1826-1900). Big Panda long been a favorite animal communities, partly because the species is cute as a baby, like a living teddy bear. Panda is also often depicted lying casually eating bamboo, not hunting, so that his image as an animal meningkatlah sweet and peaceful.
Borrowing large pandas to the zoo the United States and Japan is an important part of diplomacy of China in the 1970s because of this loan marks the first part of cultural exchanges between China and the West.
However, in 1984, the panda is no longer used as a tool of diplomacy. Instead, China began to offer pandas to other countries to borrowing only ten years. Provisions include a standard lending rate up to U.S. $ 1,000,000 per year and the requirement that a child born during the loan is owned by the People's Republic of China.
In 1998 due to lawsuits by WWF, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requires a U.S. zoo to import pandas to ensure that half of China's tariffs are set channeled to efforts to conserve wild pandas and their habitats, then the agency would issue permits to import the pandas.