Red panda

Red pandas eat mostly bamboo leaves.

They pick the softest leaf tips. Sometimes they eat fruit, roots, bugs and grubs too.

About 95 percent of a red panda's food is bamboo. Unlike the giant panda, which eats whole bamboo stems, the red panda is picky: it chooses the most nutritious leaf tips and, in season, tender new shoots. It holds the stems in its front paws and nips off leaves with its mouth.

The rest of its diet is roots, juicy grasses, fruit, insects and grubs, and now and then a bird or small mammal. Bamboo leaves do not give much energy, so red pandas have to save energy wherever they can.

Bamboo makes up about 95 percent of the diet, but red pandas feed selectively on the most nutritious leaf tips and shoots rather than on culms. They grasp stems with the forepaws, aided by a pseudo-thumb (a modified wrist bone also found in the giant panda), and shear leaves with robust teeth.

Supplementary foods include roots, succulent grasses, fruit, insects and grubs, with occasional birds and small mammals. Like the giant panda, the red panda has a simple carnivore stomach, so its leaf diet yields little energy. The Smithsonian describes it as an obligate bamboo eater on a tight energy budget for much of the year.

Red pandas live alone and sleep a lot.

They are most busy in the early morning and evening. When it is cold, they curl up into a tight, furry ball.

Red pandas live alone, except during the mating season. They are most active at dawn and dusk, and spend more than half the day resting, often high in a tree.

They are energy savers. In very cold weather a red panda can slow its body down, waking up every few hours to look for food. It curls into a ball with its tail wrapped around to stay warm. When it is hot, it stretches out along a branch and pants to cool off. Red pandas are quiet, but they can squeal, twitter and make a 'huff-quack'.

Red pandas are solitary outside the breeding season, with wild home ranges of about 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile). They are mainly crepuscular and, in human care, awake about 45 percent of the day, more active in cool weather.

The Smithsonian notes that in severe cold they can become dormant, lowering metabolic rate and raising it every few hours to forage, which brings their energy use close to that of sloths. Postural thermoregulation, curling tightly in cold and sprawling and panting in warmth, adds to the savings. Vocalizations are quiet, including squeals, twitters and huff-quacks; cubs whistle or bleat in distress. They climb to escape predators such as leopards and jackals.

Red pandas are endangered.

Their forests are being cut down. People are working to protect the forests so red pandas have a safe home.

Red pandas are endangered. There may be only about 10,000 adults left, and scientists think their numbers dropped by about 40 percent in 20 years. The main reasons are cutting down forests for wood and farms, grazing animals, collecting firewood, and poaching.

Red pandas are protected by law in all five countries where they live, and they are found in parks in each of them. People also help by setting up protected areas, working with local villages and breeding red pandas in zoos.

The IUCN lists the red panda as Endangered with a decreasing trend (2015, criteria A2cde+3cde+4cde). The Smithsonian reports an estimated 40 percent decline over two decades, likely to continue; San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance puts the adult population at around 10,000.

Threats are habitat loss and degradation from logging, livestock grazing, firewood collection, farming and settlement, plus poaching and disturbance; the arrival of livestock and dogs with people brings further risks. The species is legally protected in India, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Myanmar and occurs in protected areas in all five, though grazing, hunting and logging persist inside many of them.