Panda bears: Not as mysterious as we once thought

[nitpicker]

https://www.dw.com/en/panda-bears-not-as-mysterious-as-we-once-thought/a-48592744

Panda bears: Not as mysterious as we once thought

Date 03.05.2019
Author Clare Roth

Like you or perhaps one of your vegetarian friends, panda bears are biologically classified as meat eaters despite their plant-based diets. The panda bear, although historically a carnivore, has long sustained itself mainly off bamboo.

But unlike you or one of your vegetarian friends, panda bears didn’t watch a documentary one day and decide to ban meat from their diets for ethical or health reasons. So how did it happen? When, and why, did the bears abruptly stop eating meat and start eating plants instead?

These questions, which have occupied the minds of scientists since China began loaning its bears to Western zoos after the Communist Revolution, were misguided, according to a May 2 study conducted in the Shaanxi province of China and reported in Current Biology.

Previously, instead of basing their understanding of the evolution of the panda's diet on nutrient consumption, scientists focused on "carnivore" and "herbivore" diet classifications, which are based solely on the type of food or energy, rather than nutrients, consumed.

In reality, scientists found that a nutrient-focused analysis shows that the bears’ seemingly mysterious change of heart (or, rather, diet) isn’t so mysterious after all.

Through their bamboo-based diets, panda bears receive levels of protein and carbohydrates typical of hypercarnivores, or animals such as alligators and vultures, whose diets are composed of more than 70 percent meat, according to the study.

So, although bamboo is traditionally classified as a plant, to a panda bear, nutritionally it functions more like a meat.

Though they can still be classified as herbivores, pandas eat more like feral cats or wolves, with protein making up 50 percent of the nutrients consumed. The carnivorous classification can be extended across the life cycle – macronutrients in panda milk also indicate carnivorous composition.
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