Giant Panda

March 16 is National Panda Day, so I thought I would write about them.

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eating most of the day, using your pseudo-thumbs, your sole diet of bamboo fills you up, as you deliberately munch most hours of the day

you climb high in the trees, and when it's muggy and too hot, head to the high elevations and cooler alpine slopes

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similar to cats, the pupils in your eyes are vertical slits, and your eyesight works well at night and low light, but unlike cats, you love to swim and splash in water, and can use it to evade predators. like cats, you eat and sleep for many hours.

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you don't hibernate and may be seen playing in the snow, but when temperatures drop, so do you, heading to shelter in lower elevations

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with your thick fur and round belly, you look cuddly, but you're big and strong, and your Chinese name means giant cat bear. Pandas are important symbols, and in Chinese culture they are looked upon as peaceful and gentle

as you wander through the bamboo forest, it is replenished. your thick fur rubs against foliage, so nuts and seeds stuck to your body drop, which reseeds and enhances the habitat. as you lumber along, you also fertilize with your one hundred daily poops.

Pandas are a keystone species

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Dictionary.com defines a keystone species as: A keystone species is a species of plant or animal that most or all of the other species in an ecosystem are directly or indirectly dependent on. If a keystone species were removed from its ecosystem, that ecosystem would change dramatically. Elephants and wolves are keystone species.

Copyright © 3/14/25 by Andrea O. Corwin

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