Panda Updates- Wednesday, March 2

Did you know that we can tell a lot about an animal based on its poop? We can decipher different aspects of their diets and overall health, among other things, sometimes just at a glance! Here at the Zoo, we offer each of the giant pandas up to about 80 pounds of bamboo every day. All of that bamboo has to go somewhere! When we are cleaning everything up, sometimes we are able to see what parts of the bamboo they are eating just based on their feces. You can see in this photo that each of these look very different from one another. They are all perfectly normal and healthy in appearance. They are also actually all from the same day and from the same bear, Yang Yang. The darker green feces are from when he was primarily eating the leaves of the bamboo, while the more “mulchy” yellow is from when he was primarily eating the culm, or the stem, of the bamboo. Seeing what parts of the bamboo each bear is preferring can help us humans determine what kind of bamboo they might eat better. After all, we don’t have the sense of smell that pandas do to decide if it’s worthy to eat!

Megan H

Keeper I, Mammals