Giant pandas that were brought to Shanghai for the World Expo 2010 spend 14 hours a day eating and the remaining 10 they play and sleep.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Giant pandas that were brought to Shanghai for the World Expo 2010 spend 14 hours a day eating and the remaining 10 they play and sleep
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Six sows and four boars moved to Shanghai from the southern Chinese province of Sichuan in early 2010.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
China’s young ‘teddy’ symbols, who were born after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, settled in Shanghai’s city zoo to become its main attraction.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
China is the only place where pandas live in their natural habitat.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Chinese experts claim that giant pandas have been in existence for eight million years.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
The Chinese have studied pandas thoroughly and practically adopted them as a national symbol.
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© RIA Novosti . Мария Чаплыгина
From time to time Beijing lends pandas to other countries or appoints them ambassadors for the Olympic Games or the EXPO, like this time.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Natural reserves and zoos have the best suitable conditions for pandas.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
That is why a panda’s life expectancy in captivity is substantially longer than that in the wild: 30 years versus 19. However, such a long and comfortable life under a human watchful eye results in the pandas’ slight “obesity.” A mature panda weighs about 60 to 73 kilograms in the wild and as much as 80 to 125 kilograms in captivity.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
This difference is easy to explain since the animals spend 57% of the day eating and the remaining part they play and sleep. Their daily diet in the zoo consists of 23 kilograms of bamboo, half a kilogram of carrots and one and a half liters of milk.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Giant pandas, also referred to as bamboo bears, are included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The panda population totals about 1,600, mainly inhabiting China’s Sichuan Province. There are only 30 pandas living in captivity outside China – in Austria, Australia, Spain, the United States, Thailand and Japan.
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© RIA Novosti . Maria Chaplygina
Pandas have a unique coat pattern: a white body with seven black spots – the ears, eye patches, tip of the nose, lips and limbs, including the shoulders.
