| Many people want to see one of the cute looking white and black panda bears on their China travel experience. But what makes them so special? Sure, with the distinctive color of their fur with the black spots around the eyes, the black ears and nose they are very friendly looking and the way they hold their bamboo in their front paws in adorable. But apart from what they look like some people might not know many other facts about them. In southern China there is the well-known Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan province where visitors can learn a lot about this interesting mammal. You can check out the Chengdu flights so see how you can include this in your trip to China. 
Although the giant panda is classified as a carnivore 99 percent of their diet consists of bamboo shoots and leaves, the most nutritious part of bamboo plants; occasionally they eat other vegetation, fish and other small animals. Bamboo is in general not very nutritious and for that reason pandas eat up to 15 percent of their body weight spending about 12 hours a day chewing on bamboo. For a body weight of 160 lb (about 73 kilogramms) that would make over 24 lb (nearly 11 kilogramms) of food!
Pandas live in the mountains in high altitudes and they avoid areas where people live. As a result their habitat is shrinking with people using more and more areas in higher altitudes for farming. They sometimes starve to death because they are unable to move through valleys to find new areas in the mountains offering enough food. Pandas are solitary animals and only meet for a short time to mate. Female pandas don't give birth to cubs until the age of around six. They give birth to one or two babies at a time which stay with their mother for about one and a half years. When the little babies are born they weigh as little as 3 to 5 ounces (85 to 113 grams) which is only 1/900th of their mother's weight. It is the largest proportion difference between a mother and a child's weight in all animals.
Research and breeding centers as well as programs are making big efforts to protect this rare mammal but reproduction is a long and complicated process. An estimated 1,600 giant pandas remain in the wild in the southwestern areas of China and just over 100 are living in captivity. With a panda in its logo WWF (the World Wide Fund for Nature) is still one of the primary organizations protecting these special animals in the world. WWF even offers the opportunity to symbolically adopt pandas among many other endangered species. Do you really want to see pandas now? Start planning your China Tours, there are enough opportunities to do that.
from China Travel Blog http://blog.chinatraveldepot.com | 
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