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Essay On Red Panda

Decent Essays

I think the red panda should be kept in the zoo because it is categorised as a vulnerable species. The population of the red panda is fewer than 10,000, some say as few as a couple of thousand, remain in the wild. Almost 50% of the red panda live in the Eastern Himalayas in China. The loss of nesting trees and bamboo is causing a decline in red panda populations across much of their range because their forest home is being cleared. Also, the red panda are often caught in traps and die even though the traps were meant for wild pigs and deers. In addition, they are poached for their distinctive pelts in China and Myanmar. To prevent further decrease in the red panda’s population, they should be protected, maybe in the enclosures. The captive population of red pandas provides a backup population for the wild population. The red panda lives for 13.4 years in enclosures, while in the wild the average lifespan is 8 to 10 years. Also, the gained knowledge about the panda’s situation may awake interest from visitors to the zoo to help save them. The red pandas live in the Eastern Himalayas where there are a lot of bamboo. They eat the youngest, most tender shoots and leaves of the bamboo plant which they like a lot. There are fewer …show more content…

Fortunately, their favourite bamboo species still thrives in parts of the Himalayas. Bamboo is very high in indigestible fiber, making it very difficult to extract the nutrients, but is available in winter when their other preferred foods (such as insects) are not. When food is scarce they can spend 13 hours a day looking for and eating bamboo. In colder temperatures, they slow their low metabolic rate further and their thick fur allows them to conserve their body heat. Similar to pandas, it can be assumed that red pandas started eating bamboo because in the glacial age, bamboo was one of the few foods that the red panda did not need to compete

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