Pandas: How Carnivorous Bears Became Vegetarians Episode 64 by...

Pandas: How Carnivorous Bears Became Vegetarians

Episode 64 by Mary Bates (Click here to directly access the MP3)

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At first glance, the giant panda seems ill-suited to survive almost exclusively on bamboo. But new research reveals the latest in a suite of physical and behavioral adaptations that help it make the most of its vegetarian diet.

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For More Information:

Nie, Y., Zhang, Z., Raubenheimer, D., Elser, J. J., Wei, W., Wei, F. (2014), Obligate herbivory in an ancestrally carnivorous lineage: the giant panda and bamboo from the perspective of nutritional geometry. Functional Ecology. 

Ruiqiang Li et al. (2010). The sequence and de novo assembly of the giant panda genome. Nature 463 (21): 311–317.

Zhu, L., Wu, Q., Dai, J., Zhang, S., and Wei, F. (2011). Evidence of cellulose metabolism by the giant panda gut microbiome. PNAS 108(43): 17714-17719. 

Mary Bates is a freelance science writer living in Boston. She has a Ph.D. in psychology from Brown University where she studied bat echolocation. You can visit her website at www.marybateswriter.com and follow her on Twitter at @mebwriter.