Some Chinese pandas have started eating animal bones instead of their traditionally-preferred diet of bamboo, state-run China Central Television said on Monday.
The bizarre change in the endangered creatures' diet is thought to be due to the large-scale cutting down of bamboo forests in China.
According to eyewitness reports, wild pandas have been chewing on bones and spitting out the meat in pig pens in a region of southwest China's Sichuan province.
The mass destruction of bamboo forests could see the total extinction of the giant panda in the next three generations, specialists from the World Wide Fund for Nature say.
At least 1,500 giant pandas live in the wild in the Chinese provinces Gansu, Sichuan and Shaanxi.
BEIJING, March 1 (RIA Novosti)
