![]() Like raccoons, red pandas are known for washing their faces with their paws, and dipping their paws into water to drink. When they climb down from a tree, they go down the trunk headfirst-an unusual skill for a mammal. While they spend much of their time up in trees, they also spend a lot of time on the ground, eating bamboo. They have claws designed for climbing trees and self defense-and they are excellent climbers, as well as being adept swimmers. At other times, red pandas may make a “huff” sound that means “don’t get too close,” or a snort that means “I just want you to know I’m right here,” said Karen Scott, red panda keeper. During mating season, red pandas communicate through a unique series of vocalizations, including bleats, squeals, snorts, and sighs along with scent marking and head bobbing. Red pandas are mostly solitary animals, except during mating season or when mothers are raising cubs. Some red pandas also eat fruit, mushrooms, and bark, and red pandas at the Zoo eat leaf-eater biscuits in addition to fresh bamboo leaves. Sometimes called a “vegetarian carnivore,” a red panda may occasionally eat eggs or small animals like birds, but they prefer eating bamboo, which makes up more than 80 percent of their diet. They are considered crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) or nocturnal, but they often forage or bask in filtered sun on tree limbs during the day. Red pandas are members of their own unique family: Ailuridae. In the Zoo’s red panda exhibit, there are trees to climb and branches to traverse-and the red pandas encounter food and treats in continually changing locations, to encourage them to forage and explore. The word “panda” is believed to have been derived from a Nepalese phrase, nigalya ponya, said to mean “bamboo eater” or “bamboo footed.” refulgens (styani)-was discovered in 1897. A second red panda subspecies-the slightly larger and more brightly colored Styan’s red panda A. The western red panda’s taxon name comes from the Greek words for cat, ailouros, and fire-colored, fulgens. “Red pandas are the original panda,” said Nicki Boyd, associate curator of behavioral husbandry at the San Diego Zoo, and the Zoo’s red panda Institutional Representative. In fact, the western red panda Ailurus fulgens fulgens was first described by French zoologist Frédéric Cuvier in 1825, 48 years before the giant panda became known to Western science. And it’s not a bear.ĭespite the name, red pandas are only distantly related to giant pandas. When guests see a red panda at the San Diego Zoo, their first reaction is often “what’s that?” What they see is a fiery red-orange and reddish-brown mammal about the size of a large house cat, with a round face, keen eyes, distinctive white and brown markings, a long, fluffy tail, and a fondness for climbing trees. ![]() Number of red pandas born at the San Diego Zoo from 1940 to 1954
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