Few people know, but these amusing creatures from East Asia are true carnivores, even though their diet consists of 99% plant-based food.
Due to the peculiarities of their digestive system, pandas consume between 12 and 38 kilograms of bamboo daily, with all meals taking up to 14 hours a day.
However, this was not always the case. Pandas gradually transitioned to a vegan diet, altering not only their lifestyle but also their anatomy — during the process of evolution, these animals had to 'develop' an additional finger.
Recently, Chinese researchers discovered fossils of an extinct genus of pandas, dating back about 6 million years, near the urban district of Zhaotong in Yunnan Province.
The remains of the ancient ancestor of pandas provided the earliest evidence of a false thumb in these animals. Paleobiologists believe that the additional 'finger,' which is a modified wrist bone, resulted from evolution after the black-and-white bears switched to a plant-based mono-diet.
The false 'finger' allows pandas to grip thin bamboo stems, shoots, and roots tightly. However, unlike the hands of primates with opposable thumbs, the six-toed paw of the panda is limited in movement. For example, the animal cannot rotate the stem in its paw.
Pandas are one of eight bear species on Earth. Previously, their range extended over vast territories throughout Asia, but it has now significantly shrunk to mountainous areas in southwestern China, where the wild population numbers fewer than two thousand individuals.
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