Together with its black-and-white fur, slothful behavior and cuddly demeanor, bamboo is a defining feature of the critically-endangered giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). A single panda can consume ...

Pandas famously love bamboo but the fluffy mammals actually have digestive systems typical of animals that eat a meat-based diet - and Chinese scientists now think they know why. They say gorging on ...

While studying fossils of an ancient panda relative at the Hammerschmiede site in Allgäu, Germany, researchers discovered that these early bears had a much more diverse diet than their bamboo-loving ...

Giant pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo, and they’ve been doing that for about 2 million years. So it’s quite curious that their gut bacteria isn’t really equipped to process all that plant matter.

Even though bamboo is their main food source, giant pandas are horrible at digesting it, a new study of their gut bacteria finds. A look at the giant-panda gut microbiome (bacteria living in the ...

Giant pandas are an evolutionary mystery when it comes to their diets. Although pandas are herbivores, their guts are more like those of carnivores. After all, pandas are true bears, and most bears ...

Giant pandas eat bamboo like a wolf in vegan clothing. In the wild, pandas devour massive amounts of bamboo and digest it so efficiently that protein from the plants probably supplies at least half of ...

Already endangered by deforestation, poor reproductive rates and hunting, China’s giant pandas may now face a new threat: global warming. According to a study published online Monday in the journal ...