The giant panda is a unique mammal in my country. It is cute and naive and has two big "dark circles" under its eyes. Everyone loves it. The giant panda belongs to the bear family. It is obviously a carnivore. Why did it later "change" to become a vegetarian?

< p>Giant pandas are known as "living fossils" and "China's national treasures" and are mainly distributed in three regions: Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. They have lived on the earth for at least 8 million years. Most of the animals at the same time have become extinct. The giant panda has survived tenaciously.

The ancestor of the giant panda is Panda, and the real name of the giant panda should be "Mao Xiong", which means "cat-like bear".

Before the 1950s, people wrote in an upright manner, and read books and newspapers from right to left. It was not until later that they changed to writing horizontally, and everyone became accustomed to writing from left to right. Read, read.

In 1939, when the Beibei Museum in Sichuan held an exhibition to introduce giant pandas, they used horizontal writing, and the sign read "cat panda".

But at that time, people were still accustomed to writing in an upright manner and still read text from right to left, misreading "cat panda" as "panda". Gradually, people habitually changed the name of "Cat Bear" to "Panda".

< p>This example further proves that the giant panda actually belongs to the bear family and is a veritable carnivore. But why do giant pandas now like to eat bamboo and rarely eat meat? At present, there are mainly two opinions:

The first theory is that giant pandas do not like to eat bamboo. In order to survive, they can only choose to eat bamboo. The ancestor of the giant panda, the panda, originally lived on meat and was a top predator.

Thousands of years ago, the area where giant pandas lived underwent drastic changes, and many species became extinct, but the giant pandas survived. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer large foods that giant pandas can eat.

Giant pandas eat a lot and have heavy bodies. If they spend time and effort catching some small animals, they will consume more energy than they get from eating the small animals, and it will be more than worth the gain. , it’s better to do nothing and just starve.

But if you don’t eat a meal and you feel hungry, you can’t just wait to die of hunger! In order to continue to survive, the giant panda slowly changed its eating habits and became a vegetarian. Vegetarian food is available everywhere, and giant pandas can eat it at any time. They no longer have to work hard to find food. The activity range of giant pandas is getting smaller and smaller, and gradually they are becoming lazier and lazier.

Although giant pandas have switched to eating bamboo, bamboo is mainly distributed in three regions of my country: Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Pandas in other regions do not have enough bamboo to eat. As a result, the number of pandas in other areas plummeted until they died. This resulted in only pandas in three areas including Sichuan surviving.

< p>The second theory is that giant pandas "changed" to eating bamboo because a gene in their bodies, T1R1, is inactivated. Giant pandas cannot feel the delicious taste of meat and no longer like to eat meat.

In 2008, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of the giant panda for the first time. Scientists found that the genome of the giant panda is the closest to that of the dog, and the analysis results further support the idea that the giant panda belongs to the bear family.

In addition, they were also surprised to find that T1R1, a gene in giant pandas, was actually inactivated. Gene T1R1 is an umami gene, which is basically found in carnivorous animals. With the existence of this gene, carnivores will fall in love with eating meat and cannot refuse delicious meat food. However, the umami gene in giant pandas is inexplicably inactivated. They cannot feel the aroma of meat and naturally do not like to eat meat.

In fact, no matter which theory is true, the giant panda reluctantly chose to be vegetarian in the end. But with so many vegetarian options, why do giant pandas choose to eat bamboo? This is because compared to other foods, bamboo is widely distributed and easy to obtain. And there are very few animals that eat bamboo. Giant pandas don’t have that many competitors. They can eat as much as they want.

< p> However, giant pandas are carnivores after all. Their digestive tracts are relatively simple. They do not have a stomach and a huge cecum specially used to store food like herbivores. Moreover, the bacteria in the intestinal tract of giant pandas cannot degrade the food in plants. Fiber, which causes giant pandas to be unable to obtain enough energy from cellulose.

In order to obtain sufficient nutrition, giant pandas can only spend a lot of time eating, and they have to eat and poop at the same time. An adult giant panda spends more than 10 hours a day eating bamboo, eating more than 30 kilograms of bamboo a day, and at the same time excretes more than 10 kilograms of feces.

In order to preserve the energy in the body, giant pandas cannot do strenuous activities. They usually sit or lie down, and occasionally climb trees and walk for exercise. Otherwise they would have to spend more time eating bamboo. Giant pandas really "go to great lengths" to maintain their energy, and it's really a embarrassment for them.

The giant panda has been reduced from the "top predator" on the earth to a "vegetarian" who eats bamboo all day long, which makes people sigh.

However, it is precisely because giant pandas "changed" to eating bamboo in time and did not insist on their own way that they can live on the earth for more than 8 million years. On the other hand, giant pandas are quite intelligent. Moreover, the giant panda is now our country’s national treasure and is loved by people all over the world. It can be considered a blessing in disguise!

Friends, what do you think of giant pandas? Welcome to leave a message for discussion.