Giant pandas have lived on the earth for more than 8 million years. Many giant pandas have survived as far away as France and Hungary in Europe, Myanmar and Vietnam. To this day, the giant panda has become China's national treasure animal. Only China in the world can have giant pandas. Maybe you will have a question in your heart. Among the 233 countries and regions in the world, why only China can have giant pandas? ? What have the giant pandas experienced in their long history?

According to archaeologists, as early as ancient times During that period, giant pandas were mainly distributed in the central and southern regions of my country, and their habitats continued to expand outwards at that time. In their heyday, they were distributed in a wide range of environments, reaching Beijing in the north, southern Myanmar in the south, and northern Vietnam. . At that time, giant pandas were not only distributed in China. Traces of giant pandas were found in forests as far away as France and Hungary in Europe. And in ancient times, the giant panda was also a carnivorous animal. It lived together with the saber-toothed tigers, saber-toothed elephants, Peking Man and Australopithecus. With its strength at that time, it could completely dominate one area.

But no one expected that the Quaternary Ice Age would follow. The continental ice caps would continue to expand and thicken, causing sea levels to drop significantly. Large-scale glaciers and other natural environments would undergo drastic changes. The long-term drop in temperature has led to the extinction of most living things on the earth. At that time, a large part of the animal groups such as saber-toothed tigers and saber-toothed elephants were about to decline, and a large part of the animals had disappeared, leaving only countless fossils to prove that they had existed in history. At that time, almost all giant pandas living in the north became extinct, and the distribution area of ​​giant pandas in the south also suddenly shrank. Since then, giant pandas have also entered a period of historical decline.

As the saying goes, nature selects the fittest to survive. This sentence could not have been more appropriate at that time. Since ancient times, the Sichuan Basin has been a refuge for many species. During the Quaternary Ice Age, the area from the south of the Qinling Mountains to Sichuan was surrounded by mountains and complex terrain. In addition, it had the advantage of a mild climate and dense forests at that time. , it is very suitable for various animals to live here. The most important point is that the Qinling Mountains and Daba Mountains running east-west also successfully blocked the cold current from going south at that time, thus Sichuan formed a natural refuge for animals.

And in this process, giant pandas have lived here for many years and gradually adapted to life in the subtropical bamboo forest. The size of giant pandas has gradually become smaller and smaller, and they have no longer relied on carnivorous food to survive. They also gradually transitioned to living on bamboo. All in all, the reason why giant pandas were able to escape the catastrophe of the Quaternary Ice Age was fundamentally because they were sheltered by my country's special geographical environment. Perhaps this was the most suitable place for giant pandas to live at that time.

As early as the 1970s, coal miners in the Lufeng Basin of Yunnan discovered panda fossils in Lufeng and Yuanmou, Yunnan, China. Not only that, the workers also collected ancient ape fossils from the coal seams. Later, research confirmed that these were panda fossils from the late Miocene Epoch 8 million years ago. It also confirmed that giant pandas have survived on the earth for more than 800 years. Thousands of years. In other words, giant pandas have survived on the earth far earlier than humans. This discovery also allows scientists to directly provide the most accurate evidence for the origin and classification status of giant pandas.

At that time, many people believed that the origin of giant pandas was in Yunnan. The panda fossil discovered in Yunnan at that time was also called the "last giant panda" in Yunnan by scientists. Since the giant panda was discovered by humans, its naive image has attracted the love of many people and has attracted many fans around the world. At that time, many countries hoped to introduce Chinese giant pandas.

Then my country From 1980 to 1990, giant pandas began to be exported overseas, gradually forming the practice of leasing giant pandas in China. Nowadays, no matter which developed country or region you are in, if you want to own a Chinese panda, you must rent it from China. The annual rent for a pair of giant pandas is about 3.5 million to 6.9 million yuan, and they must also meet various stringent conditions. Only when sufficient conditions for leasing giant pandas are met can giant pandas be successfully leased from my country.

Until 1986, people discovered that the surviving number of giant pandas was extremely rare, and my country listed giant pandas as a "national first-level key wild animal". Since then, giant pandas have been protected by the China Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center, and their number has grown from only 1,100 to 1,864 today. They are now distributed in the mountainous areas of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu in my country. And currently, our country has established a total of 13 giant panda reserves, of which the number of captive giant pandas in the world has reached 600.

With the change of global climate, human activities are also prone to pollute and damage the climate environment, so we must take better measures to protect the habitat of giant pandas, and then protect this lovely animal. Rare species.