Giant
Panda-the National Treasure
High in dense bamboo forests in the misty, rainy mountains of southwestern
China lives one of the world's rarest mammals: the giant panda,
also
called the panda. The word "Panda" in Chinese literally
means "bear cat". Everybody will be deeply impressed by
its appearance: black and
white fur and funny behaviour. Giant Panda
normally weighs up to 140kg and is about 4.5 to 5 feet long with 5-inch
long tail.
Pandas eat fast, they eat a lot, and they spend about 12 hours a day
doing it. The reason: They digest only about a fifth of what they
eat. Overall,
bamboo is not very nutritious. The shoots and leaves
are the most valuable parts of the plants, so that's what a well-fed
panda concentrates on
eating. To stay healthy, they have to eat a
lot --- up to 15 percent of their body weight in 12 hours --- so they
eat fast.
Pandas seldom mate, that is a major reason why the population of panda
has declined. But if they do, they mate from March to May, and about
150 days later, from August to October, a mother panda will give birth
to one or two cubs, occasionally it might have three. If a mother
panda
gives more than one birth at a time, she chooses on cub to raise
because it might be very difficult for her to raise two. A newborn
baby panda is
as small as a rat while its tail takes one-third of
its whole body. One month later, the panda can stand up. Five month
later, the mother panda will
teach her baby to climb trees. Baby animals
are very clever: they learn the skill quickly after a few trails.
However, tragically, since 1876, the year when pandas were first accidentally
discovered in modern times by a Frenchman in Sichuan Province,
the
number of pandas gradually decreased. Statistics show that China now
has only about 1,000 giant pandas living in the wild and about 100
living in captivity.
The giant panda is one of the rarest animals in the world, and it
is considered as one of China's National Treasure. Special laws have
been
issued and tough measure taken to protect giant pandas.
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