amnhnyc:

It’s National Panda Day! 🐼 Did you know that giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) can spend up to 16 hours a day eating? Their diet consists almost exclusively of bamboo. In order to get enough nutrients, these bears can chow down on more than 80 lbs (36 kg) of it each day. And their guts are lined with a layer of mucus that protects them from woody splinters during digestion. If you’re wondering where all that waste goes, pandas can poop up to 40 times in a single day, sometimes continuing to defecate even in their sleep!

Unfortunately, the giant panda is a vulnerable species—only a little over 1,800 pandas live in the wild.

Photo: Joachim S. Müller, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr
#wildlife #nature #amazinganimals #amnh
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