Red Panda — facts, diet, habitat & conservation

The red panda is one of evolution’s one-offs. It looks like a cross between a fox, a raccoon, and a small bear, it is named after an animal it is barely related to, and it is the last surviving member of an entire branch of the carnivore family tree.

Overview

Red pandas live in a narrow band of cool, wet, mountain bamboo forest along the southern edge of the eastern Himalaya and into southwestern China, at elevations of roughly 2,200 to 4,800 m. They need dense bamboo understorey beneath a canopy of old trees, and they are strongly arboreal — feeding, sleeping, and sheltering off the ground. There are two closely related species, the Himalayan and the Chinese red panda.

A category of its own

For nearly two centuries scientists argued about what a red panda is. It has been grouped with bears, with raccoons, and on its own. Genetic work has settled it: the red panda belongs to its own family, Ailuridae, with no other living members, and its nearest relatives are the raccoons, weasels, and skunks — distant cousins at best.

Its resemblance to the giant panda — the bamboo diet, the sedentary life, and above all the “false thumb” (an enlarged wrist bone that acts as a sixth digit for gripping bamboo stems) — evolved completely independently. Two unrelated animals faced the same problem, eating bamboo, and hit on the same answers.

Physical characteristics

A red panda is about the size of a large domestic cat, with dense reddish-brown fur, a pale face marked with white “tear tracks,” black legs and belly, and a long, thickly furred tail banded with rings. The tail serves as a counterbalance in the trees and, wrapped around the body, as a blanket against the mountain cold. The soles of the feet are furred for insulation and grip on ice.

Diet and lifestyle

Bamboo leaves make up the great majority of the diet, supplemented seasonally with fruit, blossoms, acorns, bird eggs, and insects. Because the red panda digests bamboo so poorly, it eats a huge volume — up to 20,000 leaves in a day — and it economises everywhere else, moving little, holding a low body temperature, and slipping into a deep, energy-saving torpor when it is very cold.

Red pandas are mostly crepuscular and nocturnal, and largely solitary outside the brief winter breeding season. They mark their range with scent from glands between the foot pads and a distinctive “chittering” call.

Reproduction

After a variable pregnancy of 90 to 145 days — the length depending on delayed implantation — the female gives birth to one to four cubs in a tree hollow or rock den lined with leaves and moss. Cubs stay in the nest for about three months and with their mother until the next breeding season.

Threats and conservation

The red panda is Endangered, with a small and falling population:

Habitat loss and fragmentation. Its specific mid-elevation bamboo forest is being cleared and broken up by farming, logging, road building, and cattle grazing, isolating small groups.
Poaching and the pet trade. Red pandas are killed for fur and hats and, increasingly, captured alive for an illegal pet market driven by their internet fame.
Dogs and disease. Free-ranging village dogs kill red pandas and transmit canine distemper, which can be fatal.

Conservation focuses on protecting and reconnecting forest corridors, community “forest guardian” programmes in Nepal, and coordinated captive breeding.

Red Panda: common questions

Is a red panda related to the giant panda?

Only distantly. Despite sharing a name, a bamboo diet, and a "false thumb," the two are not close relatives — the giant panda is a bear, and the red panda sits in its own family, Ailuridae, of which it is the only living member. The similarities are a case of convergent evolution, with two unrelated animals arriving at the same solutions for eating bamboo.

Which animal was called "panda" first?

The red panda. It was described and named in 1825, decades before the giant panda became known to Western science in 1869. The giant panda was named after the red one, not the other way around.

How does a red panda eat so much bamboo if it can't digest it well?

Like the giant panda, the red panda kept a carnivore's short, simple gut and never evolved an efficient way to break down plant fibre — it extracts only about a quarter of the energy in the bamboo it eats. It compensates by choosing the most nutritious leaves and shoots, eating enormous quantities, and keeping its metabolism low, dropping into a torpor-like state on cold days.

Why are red pandas endangered?

Their forests are being cleared and fragmented for farming, logging, and grazing, cutting populations off from one another. They are also poached for their fur and, increasingly, captured for the illegal pet trade, fuelled by their popularity on social media, and they die from canine distemper caught from village dogs.