From eating meat to eating bamboo, is the evolution of the panda a failure?

No, the panda was a very fierce animal in ancient times, but now with its soft and cute appearance, we think it needs to be protected, but the panda does not eat meat, and bamboo is a very hard plant, it can be seen that the bite of the panda is as strong as ever.

The meat is not easy to catch, and bamboo is everywhere. Therefore, it is very inappropriate to say that the panda evolved to fail just by eating meat to eating bamboo, and the number of pandas in the Qing Dynasty was quite considerable, and they were able to survive for 8 million years, which shows the success of their evolution.

1.In the history of animal evolution, the giant panda is the leader, and in the competition for survival, the giant panda is the winner.

2.Food is the most important survival factor for an animal, and while meat is difficult to catch, the ubiquitous bamboo is difficult to eradicate because it is highly fertile and can reproduce by roots. So pandas turn to bamboo, but bamboo is an herb that provides little nutrients for pandas, so they need to eat and drink most of the day.

3.The shift from eating meat to eating bamboo may seem to have a declining place in the food chain, but the giant panda's substitution of ubiquitous bamboo for meat has superbly preserved the giant panda population.

Not failing. Another way to get the energy you need to survive. It is also adaptation to the environment.

Adapting to the living environment, the environment does not allow meat to eat, and there are many bamboos, so you have to change your eating habits.

Adapted to the environment, due to environmental factors, can no longer eat meat, in order to survive the result of their own adaptation.

It's an evolution to adapt to the environment.

The first is that meat is not easy to obtain. After a long evolution, the giant panda, which feeds mainly on bamboo, has become relatively bloated, and the bloated size is obviously not conducive to the hunting of giant pandas. To put it simply, the physical exertion of the giant panda's hunting is much greater than the energy it provides to hunt its prey.

The second is the genetic problem of the giant panda itself. According to the research of scientists, due to the long-term lack of meat **, and mainly feed on bamboo, the giant panda has now lost an important gene T1R1, strictly speaking, it is not lost, but this gene is inactive, and the inactivation of this gene makes the giant panda unable to feel the umami of meat even if it eats meat. Eventually, the giant panda no longer likes to eat meat.

In fact, at the beginning, giant pandas mainly ate meat, but later with the change of environment, giant pandas will eat bamboo in order to adapt to the environment.

The giant panda is the only mammal of the genus Giant Panda in the carnivorous order Ursidae, which has lived on the earth for at least 8 million years, and is known as a "living fossil" and a "national treasure of China".

In the middle and late Pleistocene, there were drastic changes in the natural environment such as large areas of glaciers in the Qinling Mountains and the mountains south of it, especially after the Quaternary glacial period about 18,000 years ago, the giant pandas left in Sichuan and Gansu can only live by gradually changing their eating habits, and in the process of long-term adaptation to the environment, the giant pandas have changed from carnivorous to bamboo-eating, and their molars have become particularly wide, suitable for grinding bamboo fibers.

The evolution of pandas cannot be judged by eating bamboo, judging the success or failure of evolution, and scoring several aspects.

1.About 3 million years ago, pandas began to evolve from meat-eating bears to omnivorous bears that ate bamboo and meat. About 700,000 years ago, the giant panda completely evolved into a bamboo-eating panda.

This shift was the result of adapting to circumstances, and it was victorious in the circumstances of the time. Since there was little human interference at that time, it was much more difficult to find meat in the wild than to find patches of bamboo, animals are alive, and it takes a lot of effort to catch them. So the panda found ready-made food, which increased the chances of survival.

This evolution is very victorious.

2.With the gradual rise of human beings, the destruction of the natural environment by human beings is becoming more and more serious, the habitat of giant pandas has also been destroyed by humans little by little, large bamboo forests have been destroyed, many pandas have lost the bamboo forests they rely on for survival, and for thousands of years, with the reduction of bamboo forests, the number of giant pandas has dropped sharply.

3.Until modern times, the giant panda was once an endangered species. On the one hand, the reason for this phenomenon is the destruction of nature by human beings, and on the other hand, the reason is also due to the fact that the giant panda itself has evolved to eat only bamboo, and the food ** is too single.

So from this point of view, the evolution of giant pandas to eat only bamboo is a failure.

4.Human society has been carried out from time to time, and human beings have gradually begun to protect various endangered species. The giant panda has evolved into a beloved and cute appearance due to victory, and has absorbed the attention of humans and has become an animal that humans focus on maintaining.

At present, the giant panda can continue to survive leisurely under the maintenance of humans. So from this aspect, the evolution of the giant panda into a cute appearance of eating bamboo is a victory, compared to other animals that have become extinct!

A loss may turn out to be a gain. The victory of evolution depends on the environment, humanity and other factors at that time, and it is not absolute, there is no eternal victory, and there is no eternal defeat.

It's not that failure is very successful, it's a very advanced evolution, it's very adaptable to the environment, survival of the fittest, and through the changes of the times, it's been able to survive in this environment of big elimination, and its evolution is very successful.

No, it's because bamboo is easier to obtain than meat, and when supplies are scarce, eating bamboo can power the body, and pandas can survive and reproduce later, which is a successful evolution.

The evolution of the panda is not a failure, it is precisely adapted to this environment, in fact, it is an important animal, after all, bamboo is more convenient than meat.

It has to do with the living environment.

The reason why pandas like to eat bamboo is related to the changes in their living environment, which changed in the Qinling Mountains and the mountains south of them in the middle and late Pleistocene, and in the process of adapting to the environment in the Changzhou period, giant pandas began to eat bamboo in order to survive.

In addition, bamboo is widely distributed in the wild, easy to obtain, has few competitors for food, and also contains a relatively high concentration of starch, which can provide energy for pandas, thus perpetuating this habit.

Giant pandas spend half of their day eating, and spend most of the remaining half of their time in their sleep. In the wild, giant pandas sleep for 2-4 hours in the middle of every two feedings. The diet of the giant panda 99 is bamboo, and there are more than 60 species of bamboo plants in 12 genera that can be eaten by the giant panda.

Giant pandas live between 18 and 20 years in the wild and can exceed 30 years in captivity.

Eating habits:

Giant pandas have a low digestion and utilization rate of bamboo, and the hidden food stays in the body for a short time, so they adopt the method of eating a large amount of food and excreting it quickly to obtain enough energy to meet their needs. According to the different parts of bamboo intake in different seasons, the daily feed intake of giant pandas is roughly as follows: 23-40 kg of bamboo shoots; bamboo leaves 10-18 kg; Bamboo stalk 17 kg.

Giant pandas are very intelligent animals, which is reflected in their excellent feeding strategies. They not only select the bamboo species with the best nutritional value in the area, but also give preference to the parts with the highest nutritional value. The order of feeding is bamboo shoots, young bamboo, and bamboo stalks.