SUPER ANIMAL: Giant Panda

Giant Panda

Giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleura, is an endangered species. Living solely in the mountains of central China, it has been known to the Chinese for more than two thousand years. The French missionary Pere Armand David was the first westerner who introduced it to the west. Ruth Harkness was the first one who successfully exported a giant panda out of China alive. Fossils of giant panda date back to the Pleistocene period and they show a wider distribution in those days. All carnivores evolved from the same ancestor, the miacids. Yet scientists have not yet come to a compromise of which family the giant panda falls into and whether the giant panda and the lesser panda are from the same family or not. Studies of radio-collared giant pandas showed that they are solitary animals but not territorial. Their home ranges are clearly defined.