When talking about giant pandas in ancient times, many people will immediately think of popular jokes on the Internet. "Although the giant panda looks like an 'iron fool' now, back then Chi You was riding it to fight the Yellow Emperor against Zhuolu!"

But I have searched through historical records and found no corresponding records.

The only historical data that links giant pandas to Chi You is this passage in "Historical Records: The Chronicles of the Five Emperors",

"Xuanyuan cultivated virtues and inspired soldiers, and governed the five qi. , teach Xiong Pixiu and Tiger to fight Emperor Yan in the wilderness of Banquan."

According to Professor Hu Jinchu, the earliest expert on giant pandas in China and the "godfather" of panda research, "Pixiu" is usually explained. For the giant panda. The "giant panda" mentioned in "Historical Records: The Chronicles of the Five Emperors" was obviously under the command of the Yellow Emperor.

If the above explanation is true, then if the giant panda really fought with Chi You, it was as an opponent, not a mount.

Image source: Sichuan Panda Conservation Base

In fact, according to the popular interpretation of historians, the "bears, braves, tigers" in this sentence refers to these animals. Totem's tribe, not the Yellow Emperor, actually led these beasts into battle.

The popular rumor on the Internet that "Chi You rides a panda" is just a rumor.

What did the ancients call "giant panda"?

The "Book of Mountains and Seas·Western Mountains·Nanshan" once recorded a beast called "Leopard", "Leopard is like a bear and small, with light and shiny fur. It can eat snakes and copper." Iron came out of Shu"

Guo Pu from Jin Dynasty was the first person in history to comprehensively and systematically annotate "The Classic of Mountains and Seas". His annotation in "Zhongshan Jing·Laishan" states: "It came out of Qionglai Mountain." Tapir, tapir is like a bear and is black and white. It also eats copper and iron."

It is also pointed out that the so-called "meng", "tapir" and "tapir" are actually the same thing, but the pronunciation is different.

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Loves to eat bamboo, lives in Sichuan and Sichuan, and is still black and white. This description is just short of reporting the "ID card number" of the round giant panda.

Gif source: iPanda Panda Channel

In addition to "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", other ancient books also record various titles for pandas.

For example, it is written in the "Shen Yi Jing", "There is a beast in the south, with fur as black as lacquer, that eats iron and drinks water, and is named Iron Bite."

There is also a saying in the Book of Books. Pixiu is called Baizi in "Mao Shi", "Pixiu" in "Emei Mountain Chronicles", "Pixiu" in "The Book of Beasts", and "Tapir" in "Compendium of Materia Medica".

Eating meat? Eat iron? Eat bamboo? Giant Panda: I want them all! It is not difficult to see that in the above-mentioned ancient books, the living habits of giant pandas are inseparable from the sentence that they love to eat copper and iron. Therefore, giant pandas once had a well-known name - iron-eating beasts.

< p>The great poet Bai Juyi even wrote in "Praise to the Tapir Screen" that giant pandas eat nothing but copper and iron. ("This beast eats iron and copper, but not other things.")

The incidents of giant pandas eating copper and iron recorded in ancient documents are not all the imagination of the ancients. They have also happened from time to time in modern times.

In 1979, a giant panda suddenly broke into the house and chewed up a kitchen knife and a thermos bucket. (Collection of Academic Papers of the Sichuan Zoological Society "Giant Panda")

In 1980, Guangming Daily reported that a giant panda in Wolong Nature Reserve bit an iron basin containing feed into pieces and swallowed it.

In April 1984, a giant panda suddenly broke into a farmer's home in Sichuan. It got into the kitchen and chewed on the lids and aluminum pots.

The statement that giant pandas eat copper and iron does not seem to be groundless, but it is certainly not "not eating other things" as Bai Juyi said.

Gif source: iPanda Panda Channel

In fact, as early as eight million years ago, giant pandas were pure carnivores.

But six million years ago, the style of giant pandas changed suddenly. They stopped eating meat and switched to eating bamboo.

On the one hand, it is because in that era, there were wild animals such as woolly rhinos, saber-toothed tigers, and mammoths. If you wanted to compete with them and wanted to eat meat, you would probably have to pick up their leftovers.

On the other hand, due to species evolution, the genes in giant pandas have mutated, and the meat in their hands is no longer as fragrant as bamboo.

In order to eat bamboo, giant pandas have also evolved a "sixth finger" - the "radial sesamoid bone". It is like an extra "thumb" that allows the giant panda's palms to form a grip and grasp the bamboo.

According to the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the giant panda is now a special member of the bear family and has evolved into a dedicated herbivore.

Gif source: iPanda Panda Channel

"Cat Bear" or "Panda"?

There is a popular story on the Internet about the name of the giant panda.

In 1939, a giant panda was exhibited in Beibei Civilian Park, Chongqing. During the exhibition, after the staff wrote its Latin name from left to right, in order to unify the writing, they also wrote its Chinese name "Cat Bear" horizontally from left to right. But people are accustomed to reading from right to left and recognize it as "panda". So from then on, "big panda" became "giant panda".

Many people believe it to be true and think that "giant panda" should have been called "giant panda".

On closer examination, this story does not hold up.

As early as 1911, "World Monthly" recorded that "In the western parts of China, about five thousand feet above the sea, deep in the bamboo forests, pandas live there."

The 1922 "Declaration" also recorded that a local basketball game was held and there was a team called the "Pandas".

And the word "panda" was in the "Chinese Dictionary" in 1915. "Cihai" published in 1938 also included the word "panda" to refer to giant pandas.

The newspapers, periodicals and books at that time were all arranged vertically, so there was no chance of misreading.

A scholar summarized the situation in Chinese newspapers and periodicals from 1920 to 1949 and found that the word "panda" appeared 247 times in the titles of articles about giant pandas, which was much higher than the 6 times of "cat panda".

It can be seen that in the 1930s and 1940s, "panda" had become a more common name than "cat panda".

Giant panda protection has a bright future

In modern times, due to changes in the natural environment and human activities, the situation of giant pandas was once very serious.

Our country has always attached great importance to the living conditions of giant pandas. Since the 1960s, it has continuously carried out various protection works, implemented the return of farmland to forests, and established more than 60 institutions mainly to protect giant pandas. A purpose-built nature reserve to strengthen the protection of giant panda habitats.

According to data from the 2021 "China's Biodiversity Conservation" white paper, the number of giant pandas in the wild in my country has increased from 1,114 to 1,864! The threat level of giant pandas has been reduced from "endangered" to "vulnerable"!

The successful "downgrade" of the giant panda is the greatest affirmation of my country's giant panda protection work.

At the same time, my country has made great achievements in the artificial breeding of captive giant pandas. The current captive population has exceeded 600, providing a strong guarantee for the implementation of the giant panda release project.

With the implementation of China’s ecological civilization construction, China’s giant panda protection will surely achieve greater success and write a better chapter.