The Red Panda

Image via flickr

The Red Panda

The Red Panda is also known as a lesser Panda or a Firefox, they inhabit areas of Burma, Nepal, Laos, India, Packistan, Bhutan and southern China. Given this amount of places and the size of these bamboo forests in these areas, now take the 2500 that are left in the world and guess the average. That leaves 300 on average that inhabit each of these areas. Its not that many given the size of the planet.

The Red Pandas have a low birth rate to begin with so this does not help the situation of repopulation of this species, there are also cultures in Chuna and India that uses these animals as mascots for their festivities. In China there are wedding cerimonies that the newlyweds wear these animals and have done for centuries and will continue to do so regardless. These are legit reasons for the beautiful animals being under threat but there are some not so legit ones too.  

These amazing looking animals are also under threat from land expansion, where their habitat is being destroyed to make way for farm land and housing for humans that have over populated these areas. Instead of moving away from the forests they are moving into them and also putting other species under threat. There are also people that take these animals and just kill them for their fur to make clothing, and then eat them. Their fur is worth a great price on the common market and the black market. They are also taken from the forests and sold as pets or meat, which also catches a fine price on the markets.

Image via Wikipedia

Behaviour

The red panda is an extremely good climber, they have cat like claws that can retract back into the paw. They live in bamboo areas because this is mostly what they eat. They are most active at dawn and dusk and live on the hillsides usually above 1800 meters above sea level its very rare to see them in the wil below this level. They rest during the day lazing stretched across branches, and forks in tree trunks. Because of their thick fur they are very heat sensitive and sleep up under the tree canopy during the day. They have long tails that they wrap themselves up in to shade them from the sun.

These animals like to be on their own and dont usually stay in family groups. They have their own territory and they daily spray urine on their branch or tree to let other Red Pandas know that the branch is theirs. They have a daily routine of cleaning themselves as a cat or a fox would have, they make sure that they are clean and free of parasites. They travel through the trees with great ease or they can travel along the ground in search for food, when they find this food they will pick it up and feed it into their mouths with their front paws, they have a specialy designed thumb that allows them grab and hold onto their food, just like we do. They also have a strange way of drinking water, they dont put their mouth down to the water, they bring the water up to their mouths and drink from their paws.

Image via flickr

Description

Apart from their adorable appearance and placid temperment and all round charm. They grow to be quite long, up to 47 inches in length, they stand to the height of about a foot and a half off the ground when on all fours. They have long and soft red-brown hair on their backs and heads but have, black hair underneth and they have ring striped tails, these stripes are made up of the colours of their body. They have the same face as a racoon, witch have white faces with a black nose with black rings around their eyes. Each individual Red Panda will have a distinctive face and they tell each other apart as we would. They mainly eat bamboo but they also eat fruits, berries, grasses and such things.

Image via flickr

Image via flickr