@@tuffstarr1026 "pandas deserve to go extinct" has become a popular edge lord thing to say and apparently this channel is trying to capitalise on that. Of course seeing evolution through a moralising lens is the opposite of Real Science[tm].
Unlike pandas koalas are very well equipped to digest their diet of eucalypt leaves. They are also very good at living in trees and reproduce quite well. I'm not sure there is any truth in the idea that they're dumb. Marsupials generally aren't the sharpest tools in the shed but without environmental destruction by humans they are good survivors.
@@rais1953 If I remember correctly, the idea of Koalas being dumb/ the dumbest animal on Earth comes from the size of their brain, specifically the Brain to Body Size Ratio
And their current situation caused by modern civilization disturbing their (long) established ecosystem. Panda not really failed evolution, we humans are the one who fail them
Yup! If the goal of evolution is to exist, every organism alive right now is winning! For Pandas being cute and docile was the evolutionary advantage that made humans want to protect them and care for them.
@@alicethemadrabbit1842 Pandas are not specifically docile, they WILL kill a human and they have. There are keepers without a limb due to a panda and no keeper will go in with an adult - especially a male - without back-up.
A panda walks into a restaurant and orders some bamboo for dinner. He finishes his meal, pulls out a gun, blows away the waiter and then walks out the door. When somebody asks him why he did that, he said, "Look it up." So they did and it said, "Panda - eats shoots and leaves."
sometimes species with basically no competition evolve this super difficult way of mating to keep them from exhausting their food source. if pandas bred like normal maybe in the past they would regularly eradicate their entire area of bamboo and then a whole population starved. maybe the ones that were less effective at breeding managed to just have the right amount of pandas the forest can sustain.
This video is a propaganda against panda's. Panda doesn't eat bamboo, Panda eats Chinese food, like noodles, momo's and sometimes cookies. I know this truth because I've seen a documentry called Kung fu Panda
I know right. Panda in this channel is AI generated. Not real. This video is misguided. Panda is intelligence and even know how to kungfu. Even though sometimes it is a little stupid
Obviously they have succeeded by doing a great job in the cuteness sphere for getting a perfect score on the "so cute!!" comment, and a too-cute-to-forget FedEx 300+ passenger jet/truck designed to just fly two pandas between China and the US 😂 Oh, not to mention that quite a few of them are high net worth individuals who bring in big bucks just by being themselves 😅
Evolution is a purely reactive process, it evolves animals based on the current environmental pressures not future ones. Specialization is always an evolutionary trap but it keeps happening over and over again organisms want their survival to be as easy as possible so evolving into a food niche that no one else wants always makes sense at the time.
@@TJSaw They generate billions of revenue. In China, there are Panda celebrities that can boost and entire province tourism, Do you think panda is going extinct with these revenue for humans? Is that not a success in evolution?
@@OsirisLord Yes this. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video, because the pattern of generalist -> specialist -> extinct is a common one in evolutionary history. Heck it could be considered a key part of natural selection at the species level.
Imagine being so bad at existing that the most intelligent animal in the entirety of existence, will take care of you and do everything it takes to make sure your species and you doesn't die. Seems to me they got things figured out
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
Yeah wtf God?? I'm down with the cute thing but mating chances only in between 2 days over a year depending on luck is crazy.. now Im wondering if thats how they be getting those blacked eyes.
@@Woolymammoth-db1lt "Why did you make wasps?" God: "They're pollinators, like bees and mosquitos, and so balance their species existence with plant interactions. Most species of wasps are non-aggressive, but since evolution is how an animal takes on and grows from the physics of the cosmos, environments can lend some species towards making aggressive behavior beneficial for stability. Though it can be difficult for the limitations of human consciousness to see these fluid affects, or at least not without communing to their future progeny via history and taking a structured and critical analysis of their environment, having themselves to believe the universe as stable, unchanging, physical rules they could learn, which is why the Christians and the Muslims created all the various scientific fields for study." "Why did you make pandas?" God: "I didn't, bamboo did. So you'll have to take that up with it." "Why did you create Creationists?" God: "I didn't. A lack of imagination did." "Why did you create people who don't use punctuation or capital letters?" God: "I didn't. The public schools did."
You are ignoring the main point, they evolved to live in a dense bamboo forest where nothing else grows and because bamboo is slightly toxic, fewer animal species prefer to eat it. Which means no predators, almost zero competition for food and many other benefits, if they could come up with a way to digest bamboo. They did so and in the process just like every other specie they evolved perfectly. I see them as genius that they choose to just chill and eat when other animals are out there risking their lives just to eat and sustain their population. And about panda's extinction, they were doing just fine for millions of years until humans being humans started something foolish in the 18th century and put every live on earth at risk.
Pandas actually one of the few times where humans dont have anything to do with. Picking a niche life style like this means they are very vulnerable to change.
Imagine how many species die, during cllimate changes occurred on our earth history and changes the environment, killing all the species depended on them especially the super niche one like panda and koala.
You are absolutely wrong. Totally niche animals, extremely vulnerable to climate change. There was a draught few years ago, no bamboo shoots, their number decreased quickly....
@@photon021 I agree to a point. I have to disagree (politely) that they evolved to live in a dense bamboo forest, because that sounds too much like a conscious choice. As their history shows, they were ordinary bears to begin with, but some event or series of events may have caused the species to frequent or to increasingly retreat into the bamboo which, at that time, was probably more of a refuge rather than a food source. For a carnivore, having to eat a toxic plant must have been brought about by dramatic changes to its existence outside the bamboo forests. Competition, predation, habitat perturbation, famine, any one of these pressures could have been the driver for the pandas to enter the forest, which, as you said, offered many benefits. It might have been a safe environment in which to deliver and raise cubs. Who knows? But it may have been easier for cubs to make the switch to herbivory. Whatever the cause, it proved beneficial to the survival of the species.
Pandas are a reminder that evolution does not "think". Evolution is a random process. Countless extinct animals show how often the plan doesn't work. You begin to understand how lucky the living are.
Existence and extinction are part of the plan. If Pandas bred easily, then they will not give enough time for bombo plants to regenerate its growth, which is their only food source, unlike other bear species.
@@mtrnkbsw-wd3eg it's a non-random selection that happens because of random mutations on the DNA-level. Also, there are some random accidents that have nothing or little to do with benefitial traits, like i dunno some very unfortunate animal getting hit by a lightning, *but the point is that over long stretches of time* - over many generations of a species (humans, for example have had ~12,000 generations), those kind of random accidents cancel out and you're left with benefitial traits being inherited and spreading through the population of a species - evolution taking place.
Except it was, and I'm tired to pretend that its not just because cultural osmosis (or brainrot) looking at excuses to remove the blame for the endargement of nature due to our actions.
Wild life biologist here. This video is such a weird take on Panda. Evolution just does what evolution does, there is no "do someone dirty". It is a passive selection, there is no goal or purposes besides being alive. Panda was fine until human start to destroy their habitat. Many animals are using eat a lot and move very little strategies and they are all fine. Every species will inevitably go extinct. There is no such thing as "begging to extinct". Panda is almost immune to fail damage, they have no natural predators in where they live, they were fine until we human start to fuck them over. They drop and fail because they know they can. Panda parents will encourage young panda to drop from tree or fail just to help them to learn how durable they are. Snow leopards/mountain goats and many other mountain area mammals do the same. The very fact that they haven't been changing much for 3 million years shows they are good adaptations. There is only one measurement for evolution success, that is "are they alive". If they are alive, they are good. I fail to say any "real science" in this video.
But doesn't such a niche lifestyle makes them susceptible to change? Which is why their extinction rate is much higer than that of some other species? I'm not trying to sound condescending (I'm no specialist), I'm just curious
Perspective is a wonderful thing. It could easily be said that adapting to a food source that is so full of cyanide that no other animal will touch it is a great move. Not over breeding also keeps their food source plentiful. The mistake here is not anything to do with evolution, it is ascribing purpose or motive to the process. Whether or not that is intentional, it is almost always where the description goes. Right from the question in the thumbnail it is here. Evolution can't make a "mistake" It has no end goal. It has no aim.
The way pandas eat is unlike those of herbivorous mammals, they are very similar to the route taken by caterpillars. Pandas and caterpillars are basically juicing machines. They ignore the rough, tough to digest fibres altogether, break up plant materials using their exceptionally strong mandibles, and squeeze out the protein and fats for maximum efficiency. This is the best way to tackle tough, often toxic plant materials. In contrast, many ungulates like horses and cows are often very sensitive to toxins and die easily on small doses.
Murder sounds cooler than embarrassment, tho. Not as something to experience, but being a murder of crows is less embarrassing than being an embarrassment of pandas.
@@unaffectedbycardeffects9152 And appropriately Goth. A 'murder' of crows is dark and foreboding - a certain type of cool. An 'embarassement' of pandas is the cousin who is still acting like a kid in front of the girls that the 'murder' is trying to impress.
I mean only the Polar Bear is a carnivore, all the other bears are omnivores that largely feed on fruits and shoots with the occasional meat protein thrown in. So I don’t think it’s a massive stretch for one of them to become full on herbivorous.
I think you're being unfair to pandas' evolutionary traits. They're large so other predators don't mess with them. But because of their large size they need to eat a lot of food. And there is not much to eat in a bamboo forest. So evolving to eat poisonous bamboo is amazing. And there low birthrate makes sense if there were hundreds of thousands of them. A low birthrate stablizes population and prevents them from starving.
Not really. Pandas have no natural predators because they live in an area without large predators. A tiger would have no problem taking down a panda if it ever encountered one.
@@adriani9432a panda's bite force is still pretty strong although the tiger could definitely kill a panda it's not worth the effort let alone risk a serious injury from a bite or claw swipe (not sure if pandas can do this one with any competency ) and who knows if panda meat is even a meal option for tigers as they wouldn't start a fight for no reward unless it's to defend their territory and in such situations the tiger is better off just scaring the panda away than starting a death match with it so i think even if tigers were to be present in the wild with pandas it wouldn't change much for the pandas anyways
I agree, they panda consume more protein than the average black/brown bear which makes up about 20% of the diet while panda can have more the 50% of there diet made up of protein, which is more along with wolves and domestic cats which are carnivores where bears are omnivores. Pandas also need less territory which is about 4 to 6 square km while a female North America black bear has a home range of 6.5 to 26 square kilometers As for predation risk, the oldest possible fossil evidence of a panda from a fossilized pseudo thumb dates them back to about 6 Mya, tiger evolved about 3 Mya. Keep in mind that tigers have a hard time dealing with sloth bear’s head to head dispite the fact that the Bengal tiger is larger than the south china tiger but pandas are around the same size as sloth bears. Pandas also have all of their teeth unlike sloth bears which are missing their top two front teeth (incisors), which enables them to suck up termites and other insects with ease. Due to their diet of insects and fruit, their premolars and molars are smaller than those of other bears. Pandas also have an insane bite force of 1,300 to 1,500 psi which is closer to polar bear(1,200 psi) in power than a black bear of similar size of 800 psi. In fact pound for pound a panda can generate more force with its jaws than a tiger of the same weight. There low reproduction rates also show that they aren’t pray upon that often other wise they would have been extinct by the time tigers evolved. Only a large male south china tiger would have the size to take one on and why would you when Muntjac & sambar deer would be better options. A female south china tiger, leopard, and wolves would never think about attacking a adult panda unless in dire circumstances.
Isn't bamboo one of the fastest growing plants in the world, like you can actually see them growing overnight? In a way they should be able to keep the bamboo population in check with how much they eat. Unfortunately, they seem to not want to exist and go extinct. If it wasn't for human intervention, they probably would have gone extinct.
Yeah the like to watch ratio versus sub ratio is dropping in most of the videos. This lady keeps making these comments I’m sure the channel will only be relevant for another year at most
The entire video is factual though. The panda is bad at surviving outside of their niche and they do fall a lot out of trees but they also have evolutionary trait that allows them to shrug off those falls.
Nothing evolves with a purpose just in a direction… pandas happened to evolve in z direction we think is cute good for them… rats happened to evolve in a direction that made them great at hiding in sewers and eating scraps so good for them… the effect can further strengthen the direction through forced natural selection where those that get better at eating our scraps survive better and there for continue the story further like a sort of survivors bias. Although as cuteness is objective and it doesn’t really do anything to help them survive on the wild I doubt it would be accurate to say the direction they evolved in was beneficial due to their cutness.
@@dreammaker9642 it dit help in them effectively being used as the sole symbol of environment protection. As they are used as the brand symbol by WWF representing there goal in protecting nature in general.
@ I mean great but it’s not like they getting royalties for it. What I mean is for the species as a whole it does fokol for them cause they still losing habitat and going extinct. Now for those in captivity it keeps the species going in a way but in captivity which defeats the purpose.
Fun fact: Because of the lack of salt in Bamboo, Pandas have to acquire their sodium from eating grass, fruits, even small insects. This lead to Pandas that wander into human settlement licking kitchenwares and cooking pots for salt. This was interepreted by villagers to be eating iron/metal, earning their ancient name "Iron-eaters".
although... now the idiots are in charge in some countries (hint, stars&stripes) I tend to reconsider the benefits of taking care of all the idiots.. maybe we should have kept their numbers down.
What I understand is that there is a reason why pandas evolved as such. Evolution works on really long time periods, so for all those years without disturbance, pandas peacefully had the big bamboo forests to themselves, and could reproduce slowly to ensure there is not too many pandas in one forest (as another commenter pointed out). However, this was contingent on things staying relatively constant or only gradually changing as per evolutionary time scales. Just as with any other endangered or extinct animal, its really humans who brought such a fast change that pandas got the short end of the (bamboo) stick.
Oh yeah. They existed for millions of years, now we judge and make fun of them because they are having a hard time living in a world we butchered. Seems fair.
I know it might sound crazy, but hundreds of millions of species lived and died before we came along, and the panda looks like one of those that was on their way out anyway.
@@ХорхеГарсия-э5е yeah "some" random scientist theorized they would be going extinct without humans ruining their natural habitat. That's a theory, not fact
One of my favourite facts about panda stupidity is you can trick them into raising more than one cub at a time, simply by swapping the cubs out when the panda isn't looking.
I disagree that "pandas are victims of their own evolutionary choices." Pandas are a function of evolutionary pressures. They never had any say or choice or agency regarding the matter of their evolution. A niche developed and they evolved to fill it. Evolution is nothing if not simultaneously both opportunistic and lazy. Pandas were always "good enough" to take advantage of bamboo as it grows and probably flourish during mast years (and likely eat chicks and eggs if abundant enough; our chickens come from the same area as pandas, and their fertility is based on the presence of food and potential mates, which explodes when entire bamboo forests flower, go to seed and die, called "mast years"). Try feeding female pandas lots of raw eggs and chicks, see if that doesn't trigger higher fertility.
No, they are not. They are from family Procyonidae, while bears and panda are from family Ursidae. You can see it on the phylogenic tree shown in he video. They do share a common ancestor however.
@@so-ares, that's because they are closely related to the red panda, which is the "true", and the first to be discovered and classified, Panda. Red pandas are not bears, like raccoons are not, they are from the family "Mustelidae" and bears from "Ursidae", and they are all in the order "Carnivora" along with the Felidae and Canidae families. Raccoons are trash pandas because of red pandas and not giant pandas.
Once, while deep in a Graham Hancock-esque rabbit hole on youtube, i came across the theory of pandas being the remnants of a domesticated animal from an very old civilization of humans that has since disappeared. All that was left of those humans was this pet that had been domesticated and genetically altered so much that it couldn't live without human care. In my thc induced state of mind it all made so much sense
The problem is that in this day and age the environment favors opportunists and not specialists. But hell, surviving on something that is plentiful and nobody wants to eat is by no means a bad strategy and when done optimally is highly effective kinda like in leafcutter ants, though while they technically only eat fungus they can use practically any leafy organic material to grow them so they are kinda extreme generalist in that regard.
This is the flaw with humans by imagining that animals have duties as we do, to preserve themselves or their offspring, in nature nobody forces you to exist and if the local biosphere allows a panda to take a chill approach to reproduction, hunting and similar aspects of their life more credit to them. Who knows perhaps not having to chase after other animals mindlessly so you can just bring more energy to yourself via food to keep running after other animals, to produce offspring at same pace as rabbits to completely throw off the balance of ecosystem when predators aren't around instead of chilling and eating bamboo all day and enjoy the surrounding nature at your own leisurely pace sounds like sweet deal. Humans are the "intelligent" species that creates wars with it's own species for resources, over use the planet and animals for their own selfish ends and run their lives stressed by their own invented concepts, rules and errands to make more tiny clones of themselves... I think human would be the last creature I'd ask about how to live life to the fullest, and same goes to the usual prey/predator species at large. Pandas got it right!
I have read that the panda’s pseudo-thumb is actually an ancestral trait of arctoidea. The spectacled bear sometimes have a pseudo-thumb despite being short faced bears that are more closely related to typical ursine bears than to pandas.
That's what make both the spectacled bear and panda astonishing is that they are both the last surviving members of each of their own subfamily of bears the short faced bears and the running bear which includes the largest known bears and the only bears in Africa.
Evolution is indeed random and does not happen for a purpose. However, the process of evolution takes shape the way it does primarily through environmental constraints. When she says it happens "for a reason," what she means is "there must have been some sort of constraints such that every other version of the panda died out, and this is the only one that survived." Which I'm sure she might have said if she was trying to be as lingually precise as possible, but that's largely unnecessary because of a little skill called "extrapolation." Most humans are capable of figuring out what she means by "for a reason" without needing clarification, and so do not need such a degree of precision in language.
@@Chameleonred5 Right - the "reasons" are during the evolutionary process. I meant that saying "for a reason" can lead people to look for reasons after the process is finished, such as that pandas evolved to keep bamboo from overtaking the forest. This is a common way of thinking about evolution that can be confusing.
Panda mothers actually take care of their babies full heartedly. But in wild life, conditions usually doesn’t allow them to take care of twins at the same time, because little ones are always born immaturely.
I think as much as they adapted to bamboo, they also adapted to eating insects that live within the bamboo which would probably provide a lot of calories for them.
Pandas may have found the most inefficient way to avoid extinction but they DID find a way to get everyone else on board with saving them: Being super cute 🥰
This is an episode that deserves the "insane" moniker and yet you didn't use it in the title? For shame lol. These animals are insanely lucky to still be walking this Earth!!
I remember visiting Chongqing zoo many years ago. The pandas were all sitting while chewing on bamboo like they hadn't eaten in months - take a huge 'handful' and run it through their mouths stripping of the leaves like some cartoon animal... one was wriggling about, seemingly with a very itchy bottom. It took the bundle of bamboo it was halfway though stripping, used that to scratch it's own bum, tried to return to eating, decided it didin't like the result and handed the soiled bundle to another panda who eat it, then grabbed a new bundle for itself.
Pandas 🐼 make sense when you remember virtually all herbivores cannot grasp bamboo 🎍, as they don't have hands of the right size, so suck at eating it. So they have no competition. And no competition makes even a terrible lifestyle viable.
I don't know who has been dunked on more at this point by @Real Science, the sunfish, or the panda... But the panda being related to such powerfull creatures such as bears, I think deserves it more. She did my boy sunfish wrong a lot, poor guy, I laughed so hard at that intro too tho 😂
Evolution doesn't have any real laws or regulations it just happens and sometimes it goes horribly wrong, the koala is another evolutionary dead end and are very similar to the panda in their eating habits. There are birds that have evolved to only eat the nectar of a single orchid species. There are literally hundreds of thousands of species that are so specialised that they are constantly on the verge of extinction, so the panda is actually just normal and not that different in the game of life.
Thank you for calling out the evolution deniers. It drives me crazy how someone can say it doesn't exist with the amount of evidence we have that it does.
Same, I don’t get why people act like you can’t believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. Seems like a closed minded way of thinking to think you gotta believe in one or the other
@Da_Juice I've always believed God is capable of evolution. If a person believed that he was capable of all things, he is capable of evolution. The Bible was written at a time no one had an understanding of the world around them, it doesn't make it wrong. The Bible doesn't say God created gravity or the atomic theory, regardless. The Bible says he created all things, so that would include the forces that government the universe as well. Science is a means of understanding those forces. Genesis states 7 days to create...but that was before time existed, so 7 days may be 4 billion of our years, not God's. Or it was just what was understood by the writers of the old testament.
Creationists who think the world was created as is; are a true miracle. That this level of stupidity among families among so much information somehow didn't get weeded out millennia ago.
There's a certain school of thought that believes animals "make evolutionary choices." As if pandas woke up one morning and decided, 'Today, I'm going to become a herbivore and eat bamboo'. When I was studying animal behaviour, I was introduced to the concept of the 'best of a bad situation'. Meaning, that animals, when confronted with significant evolutionary challenges, such as predation, will do what they can to survive despite the circumstances they find themselves in. Evolving predator avoidance strategies such as camouflage, flight reaction or diurnal migration, for instance. It could be that pandas were outcompeted by their ursine relatives, or sought refuge away from predators in dense bamboo forests. Whatever the reason, panda ancestors found themselves being driven into forests where the supply of animal protein was little to none, so had to resort to supplementing their diet with more vegetation than normal. Because the most abundant plant food available was of poor quality, they were obliged to forage longer and eat more to obtain the optimum calories to survive. Lacking animal protein in their diet probably lead to the loss of their T1R1 gene pushing them over into obligate herbivory. Their slower metabolism facilitated herbivory, followed by the acquisition of cellulose digesting bacteria. The 2.4my time period and the ancestral gut length indicates that the switch to herbivory was quite rapid in evolutionary terms.
11:52 That's also the case with sloths, who are extremely slow in the trees and on the ground. But still their claws are strong enough to carry their weight in the canopy.🤔🦥
Some other animals who are suffering from amnesia forgetting their true identity. See falling down on the ground for millions of years is not a good thing
If I offered you the ability to spend all day lazing around and eating free food that grew everywhere around you , don't tell me you wouldn't be tempted.
Given the fact that they share the same continent with three other Bear species (Asiatic Black Bear, Sun Bear and Sloth Bear), other animals like Asian Elephants, Indian Rhinos, Tigers, Snow Leopards, Saltwater Crocodiles, Dholes, Leopards and, historically, Cheetahs, Lions, Paleoxodon and Gigantopithecus, it's no wonder that they decided to isolate themselves in a niche with next to no competition.
4:49 And also, the organ called appendix helps herbivores to digest the cellulose in plants that they eat. With carnivores (and most omnivores) that organ has shriveled, as it wasn't needed anymore.🤔🌿
Pandas should be labeled anthropocene dependents alongside domestic cattle. Essentially they survive because humanity conciously allows it. If we even forget that they exist, never mind actually killing them on purpose, they'd go extinct in short order.
Except that they were thriving throughout vast swathes of Asia before Homo Sapiens even existed there. They are endangered because of humans destroying their habitat, nothing else.
De hecho, los humanos los han puesto en peligro de extinción. Posiblemente los pandas vivirían cientos de miles de años más, pero en los últimos dos siglos se ha reducido su población al punto de que si no los mantienen en determinados lugares pueden extinguirse definitivamente.
2:15 There is actually a good reason why pandas do that: horse feces has certain enzymes that protect them from the cold. Because pandas don't hibernate during winter like many other bears, and they can't get enough insulation from bamboo alone, they have to find other ways to keep themselves warm.🐼💩
i dont like the perspective on pandas this video highlights, they could be considered idiots compared to other animals, but they evolved like this for a reason, eating bamboo worked out for them for 6-7 million years and in my personal opinion i think pandas have a different type of intelligence and you can see it in the way they play around a lot, there arent many animals who take life with such ease even in the way they move. pandas attitude towards our reality is different from almost every other animal and thats why we should treasure them even more. there is tremendous value in what pandas stand for in my heart, and i dont agree with the pragmatic view of them being stupid or undeserving of life, thats just harsh and i think we all learned from when we were kids, that things are often not what they seem at first, pandas seem stupid, but maybe you just have to think about it a bit longer, to get why their existence is actually really important.
Eh. They seem to do well enough. They've been alive for millions of years and would be doing fine if people didn't fuck with their habitat. Leave it to people to blame the animal for being unable to adapt to a world that people change to suit their own needs.
3:37 That was most likely because in such dense forests, it's much easier to find plant-based food than to hunt for meat (although tigers also live in same regions, and they're pure carnivores). And pandas are also too slow to catch any escaping prey. They can still sometimes scavenge carcasses left by tigers for extra nutrients.🤔🐯
Fascinating video about the Panda! However, one glaring mistake is that Bears are not true hibernators. They undergo states of torpor during the winter months. The very best hibernators on the planet are Bats! 👍👍🦇🦇
The Red Panda is the true and first Panda, this is the Giant Panda, or false Panda. "The giant panda was initially considered the "true" panda because of its prominence and size. However, the red panda was actually described and named scientifically before the giant panda, receiving the name panda in 1825. The term “panda” is derived from the Nepali word ponya, meaning bamboo or plant-eating animal." So the giant panda only is known by the name "Panda" due to its popularity, not by taxonomy. The true "Panda" is the red one.
9:51 why are cats shown to be herbivores in that graph? I get if cats are able to process cyanide in low doses maybe, but they are obligate carnivores. Just sayin.
They are not shown to be herbivores but rather its showing what levels of this enzyme carnivores have as comparison. It isn't much at all. And pandas only have a little more than a true carnivore
Hello, the zoological research from 2021 has called and asked why you still hadn't updated your information on pandas' diet with the recordings of wild specimen eating carrion. It's on youtube too. Besides, it had been confirmed that they will sometimes hunt for pikas and other small rodents.
the fact that panda survived 6-7 million years on bamboo is already impressive.
Ikr?
Exactly. So what's her point?
Because no predators and competition with other species of herbivores
@@tuffstarr1026 "pandas deserve to go extinct" has become a popular edge lord thing to say and apparently this channel is trying to capitalise on that. Of course seeing evolution through a moralising lens is the opposite of Real Science[tm].
And to think that in our lifetime we might be witnessing evolution run it's course for Pandas is hard to grasp
Pandas and Koalas are pretty amazing in picking a sustenance niche that makes basically no sense
Not sure which is worse. I’ve heard koalas are literally the dumbest animals on earth but at least they can survive on their own.
@Kunfucious577 they won't recognize their food if it isn't attached to the tree anymore but at least they're making babies
Unlike pandas koalas are very well equipped to digest their diet of eucalypt leaves. They are also very good at living in trees and reproduce quite well. I'm not sure there is any truth in the idea that they're dumb. Marsupials generally aren't the sharpest tools in the shed but without environmental destruction by humans they are good survivors.
If a food source is plentiful something is going to take advantage of it.
@@rais1953 If I remember correctly, the idea of Koalas being dumb/ the dumbest animal on Earth comes from the size of their brain, specifically the Brain to Body Size Ratio
Stephanie: "It really looks like pandas are just simply bad at surviving."
Pandas: "Which part of '6 million years' didn't you understand"? 🙂
And their current situation caused by modern civilization disturbing their (long) established ecosystem. Panda not really failed evolution, we humans are the one who fail them
It's always human fault if looked closely. Destroyed whole ecosystem. Yet humans just blames everything else except itself.
Yup! If the goal of evolution is to exist, every organism alive right now is winning!
For Pandas being cute and docile was the evolutionary advantage that made humans want to protect them and care for them.
@@alicethemadrabbit1842 Pandas are not specifically docile, they WILL kill a human and they have. There are keepers without a limb due to a panda and no keeper will go in with an adult - especially a male - without back-up.
@@MayYourGodGoWithYou ooooh i did not know that. I will have for sure lost a limb trying to pet one. 😬
Real Science: Pandas Are Impressively Bad at Existing
Pandas (after chilling for millions of years): Hold my bamboo
They are threatened now… humans primarily the china people are trying their best to help them
@@WestbrickFansGotNoBrains yes, but most of it comes from habitat destruction, poaching and so on which is our fault
Pause??
A panda walks into a restaurant and orders some bamboo for dinner. He finishes his meal, pulls out a gun, blows away the waiter and then walks out the door. When somebody asks him why he did that, he said, "Look it up." So they did and it said, "Panda - eats shoots and leaves."
Lol
@@realscience Awesome video btw, I really liked your funny style of presenting the facts! 🐻
@@Spielkalb-von-Sparta that was really funny
😂
Good 1 that
sometimes species with basically no competition evolve this super difficult way of mating to keep them from exhausting their food source. if pandas bred like normal maybe in the past they would regularly eradicate their entire area of bamboo and then a whole population starved. maybe the ones that were less effective at breeding managed to just have the right amount of pandas the forest can sustain.
That actually makes sense, nature is wild man
Yes, I think so and agreed with your analyze
This makes so much sense, I'm annoyed again... 😅
Perhaps, but seeing as you can literally hear bamboo grow at times, unlikely. Their food source is a unstoppable weed.
Isn't that essentially what the Malthusian theory states humans are doing to themselves right now?
Pandas are playing 5D chess, the bamboo strategy was only a stepping stone for the true goal of being 'too cute to fail'.
Cats also did that except they didn't even need to. Now all the planet is full of small and fluffy weapons of mass biodiversity destruction.
For real, my buddy always jokes about how cats essentially tricked us into thinking they need to be taken care of, CAUSE LOOK HOW CUTE @@_Ve_98
"We covered mice in poo and they didn't cuddle as much" Yeah I wouldn't want cuddle if I was covered in poo either.
Underrated insight 😂
Me neither
Depends who I'd be told to cuddle with.
Not proud of this.
You have no imagination, young padawan 😤
This video is a propaganda against panda's. Panda doesn't eat bamboo, Panda eats Chinese food, like noodles, momo's and sometimes cookies. I know this truth because I've seen a documentry called Kung fu Panda
I know right. Panda in this channel is AI generated. Not real. This video is misguided. Panda is intelligence and even know how to kungfu. Even though sometimes it is a little stupid
Don't forget We Bare Bears.
You might even say is a progapanda.
I too vouch for this person.They out to tarnish the panda name yet clearly pandas love noodles
😂😂😂😂😂
They invested all their character points on cuteness as method of survival
Obviously they have succeeded by doing a great job in the cuteness sphere for getting a perfect score on the "so cute!!" comment, and a too-cute-to-forget FedEx 300+ passenger jet/truck designed to just fly two pandas between China and the US 😂
Oh, not to mention that quite a few of them are high net worth individuals who bring in big bucks just by being themselves 😅
it worked for dogs and cats..
Pandas have fallen into an evolutive trap, but eventually one thing will save them: Their cuteness
Evolution is a purely reactive process, it evolves animals based on the current environmental pressures not future ones. Specialization is always an evolutionary trap but it keeps happening over and over again organisms want their survival to be as easy as possible so evolving into a food niche that no one else wants always makes sense at the time.
I don't see it; there may always be a small captive population, but their extinction in the wild seems inevitable.
Nope. Cuteness has its shelf life. And they’re not that cute either. They’re dumb and clumsy. No one has patience for that.
@@TJSaw They generate billions of revenue. In China, there are Panda celebrities that can boost and entire province tourism, Do you think panda is going extinct with these revenue for humans? Is that not a success in evolution?
@@OsirisLord Yes this. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video, because the pattern of generalist -> specialist -> extinct is a common one in evolutionary history. Heck it could be considered a key part of natural selection at the species level.
Imagine being so bad at existing that the most intelligent animal in the entirety of existence, will take care of you and do everything it takes to make sure your species and you doesn't die. Seems to me they got things figured out
Right! As an evolutionary strategy, "Humans find me cute" beats "Rolls around in poop and eats a ridiculously low energy food source".
@MickPosch lmao
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
Pandas are secretly the final boss, but it wears a cute stupid disguise so we won’t catch on…
@@5falltv895Yeah, we humans have an awfully high opinion of ourselves, don't we?
Somebody had to eat bamboos. Pandas bit the bullet and stepped up. Thanks Pandas!
I like fried bamboo shoots, but I don't eat it as often as I want to.
Joke aside, you're kinda right there. Bamboo plants may destroy biodiversity and other food sources if left unchecked
God: I need to assign a group to eat cyanide infused bamboo…. Pandas: I volunteer as tribute!
The most sensible reason! Ah 😮
There are other animals that eat bamboo, but they're all herbivores.
"why would God create pandas?"
I mean look at them, why not?
They are the cutest
id also ask god "why make the wasp"? it made charles darwin question god
Yeah wtf God?? I'm down with the cute thing but mating chances only in between 2 days over a year depending on luck is crazy.. now Im wondering if thats how they be getting those blacked eyes.
God created pandas to see if humans have empathy and sympathy enough to keep them from going extinct is a test
@@Woolymammoth-db1lt
"Why did you make wasps?"
God: "They're pollinators, like bees and mosquitos, and so balance their species existence with plant interactions. Most species of wasps are non-aggressive, but since evolution is how an animal takes on and grows from the physics of the cosmos, environments can lend some species towards making aggressive behavior beneficial for stability. Though it can be difficult for the limitations of human consciousness to see these fluid affects, or at least not without communing to their future progeny via history and taking a structured and critical analysis of their environment, having themselves to believe the universe as stable, unchanging, physical rules they could learn, which is why the Christians and the Muslims created all the various scientific fields for study."
"Why did you make pandas?"
God: "I didn't, bamboo did. So you'll have to take that up with it."
"Why did you create Creationists?"
God: "I didn't. A lack of imagination did."
"Why did you create people who don't use punctuation or capital letters?"
God: "I didn't. The public schools did."
@@Diegos1707so what about the other extinction events we were never even there for?
You are ignoring the main point, they evolved to live in a dense bamboo forest where nothing else grows and because bamboo is slightly toxic, fewer animal species prefer to eat it. Which means no predators, almost zero competition for food and many other benefits, if they could come up with a way to digest bamboo. They did so and in the process just like every other specie they evolved perfectly. I see them as genius that they choose to just chill and eat when other animals are out there risking their lives just to eat and sustain their population. And about panda's extinction, they were doing just fine for millions of years until humans being humans started something foolish in the 18th century and put every live on earth at risk.
👏👏
Pandas actually one of the few times where humans dont have anything to do with. Picking a niche life style like this means they are very vulnerable to change.
Imagine how many species die, during cllimate changes occurred on our earth history and changes the environment, killing all the species depended on them especially the super niche one like panda and koala.
You are absolutely wrong. Totally niche animals, extremely vulnerable to climate change. There was a draught few years ago, no bamboo shoots, their number decreased quickly....
@@photon021 I agree to a point. I have to disagree (politely) that they evolved to live in a dense bamboo forest, because that sounds too much like a conscious choice. As their history shows, they were ordinary bears to begin with, but some event or series of events may have caused the species to frequent or to increasingly retreat into the bamboo which, at that time, was probably more of a refuge rather than a food source. For a carnivore, having to eat a toxic plant must have been brought about by dramatic changes to its existence outside the bamboo forests. Competition, predation, habitat perturbation, famine, any one of these pressures could have been the driver for the pandas to enter the forest, which, as you said, offered many benefits. It might have been a safe environment in which to deliver and raise cubs. Who knows? But it may have been easier for cubs to make the switch to herbivory. Whatever the cause, it proved beneficial to the survival of the species.
Pandas are a reminder that evolution does not "think". Evolution is a random process. Countless extinct animals show how often the plan doesn't work. You begin to understand how lucky the living are.
Makes me believe more and more that everything is accidental.
Noway, there's no accident
Pandas are just an accident, maybe the fact of falling on their head break something within them
Existence and extinction are part of the plan. If Pandas bred easily, then they will not give enough time for bombo plants to regenerate its growth, which is their only food source, unlike other bear species.
@@mtrnkbsw-wd3eg it's a non-random selection that happens because of random mutations on the DNA-level. Also, there are some random accidents that have nothing or little to do with benefitial traits, like i dunno some very unfortunate animal getting hit by a lightning, *but the point is that over long stretches of time* - over many generations of a species (humans, for example have had ~12,000 generations), those kind of random accidents cancel out and you're left with benefitial traits being inherited and spreading through the population of a species - evolution taking place.
If this is the case, I'm getting fed up of every single paleontology video containing the phrase 'this adaptation may have evolved for...'
Panda does something stupid.
Researchers: Brilliant evolutionary gambit!
just wanted to let you know this comment made me laugh harder than I intended to. Got me cackling.
Thats a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays for them.
Except it was, and I'm tired to pretend that its not just because cultural osmosis (or brainrot) looking at excuses to remove the blame for the endargement of nature due to our actions.
My channel also makes videos about animals.☺🥰
Like some humans, Pandas chose to go against evolution and become vegans to be kind to animals and are slowly going extinct 😆
"It sounds like the Panda is just too stupid to know it should die"
Ah, so it's a koala situation, then.
Fires and chlamydia koala biggest enemy
¿porque no los dos?
Looking like a plush toy is an evolutionary advantage - others will take care of that 'survival' thing for you.
Or is it the cleverest? Get humans to feed, protect them and all they have to do is sit back look cute and be as dopey as possible 😅
more like the trumper fanbase..
Wild life biologist here. This video is such a weird take on Panda.
Evolution just does what evolution does, there is no "do someone dirty". It is a passive selection, there is no goal or purposes besides being alive.
Panda was fine until human start to destroy their habitat.
Many animals are using eat a lot and move very little strategies and they are all fine.
Every species will inevitably go extinct.
There is no such thing as "begging to extinct".
Panda is almost immune to fail damage, they have no natural predators in where they live, they were fine until we human start to fuck them over.
They drop and fail because they know they can.
Panda parents will encourage young panda to drop from tree or fail just to help them to learn how durable they are.
Snow leopards/mountain goats and many other mountain area mammals do the same.
The very fact that they haven't been changing much for 3 million years shows they are good adaptations.
There is only one measurement for evolution success, that is "are they alive".
If they are alive, they are good.
I fail to say any "real science" in this video.
Maybe not so much science, but super informative!!❤
@@anniehills3580misinformation are information too. Informative doesn't mean true.
But doesn't such a niche lifestyle makes them susceptible to change? Which is why their extinction rate is much higer than that of some other species? I'm not trying to sound condescending (I'm no specialist), I'm just curious
Panda's are somewhat lucky that humans are suckers for cute things, and they happen to have a cuteness factor.
the cuteness thing is the mammal way, it's how we take care of our own young and not harm other people's offspring.
ever heard of a warrior panda
@@stonerwitchu
You mean Po, the Dragon Warrior?
Perspective is a wonderful thing. It could easily be said that adapting to a food source that is so full of cyanide that no other animal will touch it is a great move. Not over breeding also keeps their food source plentiful.
The mistake here is not anything to do with evolution, it is ascribing purpose or motive to the process. Whether or not that is intentional, it is almost always where the description goes. Right from the question in the thumbnail it is here. Evolution can't make a "mistake" It has no end goal. It has no aim.
The way pandas eat is unlike those of herbivorous mammals, they are very similar to the route taken by caterpillars. Pandas and caterpillars are basically juicing machines. They ignore the rough, tough to digest fibres altogether, break up plant materials using their exceptionally strong mandibles, and squeeze out the protein and fats for maximum efficiency. This is the best way to tackle tough, often toxic plant materials. In contrast, many ungulates like horses and cows are often very sensitive to toxins and die easily on small doses.
Stephanie: "The official term for a group of pandas is an 'embarrassment' of pandas." (2:25)
Crows: "Hey, that's not so bad. Could be a lot worse." 😂
Murder sounds cooler than embarrassment, tho. Not as something to experience, but being a murder of crows is less embarrassing than being an embarrassment of pandas.
@@unaffectedbycardeffects9152 Crows are constantly on a murderous spree cause they be grouping often.
@@unaffectedbycardeffects9152 And appropriately Goth.
A 'murder' of crows is dark and foreboding - a certain type of cool.
An 'embarassement' of pandas is the cousin who is still acting like a kid in front of the girls that the 'murder' is trying to impress.
Well, a group of baboons are called a congress. That pretty much explains everything that comes out of Washington nowadays. Lol
I am convinced that one day pandas will be leased as Earth’s diplomatic gifts to aliens.
I mean only the Polar Bear is a carnivore, all the other bears are omnivores that largely feed on fruits and shoots with the occasional meat protein thrown in. So I don’t think it’s a massive stretch for one of them to become full on herbivorous.
True but just bamboo is just dumb, they don’t even eat other plants
I think you're being unfair to pandas' evolutionary traits. They're large so other predators don't mess with them. But because of their large size they need to eat a lot of food. And there is not much to eat in a bamboo forest. So evolving to eat poisonous bamboo is amazing. And there low birthrate makes sense if there were hundreds of thousands of them. A low birthrate stablizes population and prevents them from starving.
Not really. Pandas have no natural predators because they live in an area without large predators. A tiger would have no problem taking down a panda if it ever encountered one.
@@adriani9432a panda's bite force is still pretty strong although the tiger could definitely kill a panda it's not worth the effort let alone risk a serious injury from a bite or claw swipe (not sure if pandas can do this one with any competency ) and who knows if panda meat is even a meal option for tigers as they wouldn't start a fight for no reward unless it's to defend their territory and in such situations the tiger is better off just scaring the panda away than starting a death match with it so i think even if tigers were to be present in the wild with pandas it wouldn't change much for the pandas anyways
@@godfistleesin1971 if Tigers lived in a bamboo forest with little to no large animals to feed on all the pandas will get wiped out in months lol
I agree, they panda consume more protein than the average black/brown bear which makes up about 20% of the diet while panda can have more the 50% of there diet made up of protein, which is more along with wolves and domestic cats which are carnivores where bears are omnivores.
Pandas also need less territory which is about 4 to 6 square km while a female North America black bear has a home range of 6.5 to 26 square kilometers
As for predation risk, the oldest possible fossil evidence of a panda from a fossilized pseudo thumb dates them back to about 6 Mya, tiger evolved about 3 Mya. Keep in mind that tigers have a hard time dealing with sloth bear’s head to head dispite the fact that the Bengal tiger is larger than the south china tiger but pandas are around the same size as sloth bears. Pandas also have all of their teeth unlike sloth bears which are missing their top two front teeth (incisors), which enables them to suck up termites and other insects with ease. Due to their diet of insects and fruit, their premolars and molars are smaller than those of other bears. Pandas also have an insane bite force of 1,300 to 1,500 psi which is closer to polar bear(1,200 psi) in power than a black bear of similar size of 800 psi. In fact pound for pound a panda can generate more force with its jaws than a tiger of the same weight. There low reproduction rates also show that they aren’t pray upon that often other wise they would have been extinct by the time tigers evolved. Only a large male south china tiger would have the size to take one on and why would you when Muntjac & sambar deer would be better options. A female south china tiger, leopard, and wolves would never think about attacking a adult panda unless in dire circumstances.
Isn't bamboo one of the fastest growing plants in the world, like you can actually see them growing overnight? In a way they should be able to keep the bamboo population in check with how much they eat. Unfortunately, they seem to not want to exist and go extinct. If it wasn't for human intervention, they probably would have gone extinct.
And here I thought the sunfish intro was scathing...
Yeah the like to watch ratio versus sub ratio is dropping in most of the videos. This lady keeps making these comments I’m sure the channel will only be relevant for another year at most
Lol so true
@@MrBlackSatelliteWas this written by a panda.
@@alantremonti1381 They make a good point though. We're here for 'Real Science', not school yard insults that are already everywhere on the internet.
The entire video is factual though. The panda is bad at surviving outside of their niche and they do fall a lot out of trees but they also have evolutionary trait that allows them to shrug off those falls.
I think pandas evolved to live off of humans being easily distracted by cute and fluffy things
Nothing evolves with a purpose just in a direction… pandas happened to evolve in z direction we think is cute good for them… rats happened to evolve in a direction that made them great at hiding in sewers and eating scraps so good for them… the effect can further strengthen the direction through forced natural selection where those that get better at eating our scraps survive better and there for continue the story further like a sort of survivors bias. Although as cuteness is objective and it doesn’t really do anything to help them survive on the wild I doubt it would be accurate to say the direction they evolved in was beneficial due to their cutness.
@@dreammaker9642 it dit help in them effectively being used as the sole symbol of environment protection. As they are used as the brand symbol by WWF representing there goal in protecting nature in general.
@ I mean great but it’s not like they getting royalties for it. What I mean is for the species as a whole it does fokol for them cause they still losing habitat and going extinct. Now for those in captivity it keeps the species going in a way but in captivity which defeats the purpose.
Fun fact: Because of the lack of salt in Bamboo, Pandas have to acquire their sodium from eating grass, fruits, even small insects. This lead to Pandas that wander into human settlement licking kitchenwares and cooking pots for salt. This was interepreted by villagers to be eating iron/metal, earning their ancient name "Iron-eaters".
食铁兽
Panda has evolve very well, panda predicted the internet culture where cute cats and pandas dominate the views and subscriber count.
Yeah, even their name reflects it: Ailuropoda means 'cat-foot', and the Chinese word for panda translates to 'cat-bear'.
"Sometime we just have to take care of the idiots amongst us" i feel like i need that on a t-shirt; with a big dumb cute panda on it.
she rly seem to hate pandas
Make one😭😭will def buy
although... now the idiots are in charge in some countries (hint, stars&stripes) I tend to reconsider the benefits of taking care of all the idiots.. maybe we should have kept their numbers down.
What I understand is that there is a reason why pandas evolved as such. Evolution works on really long time periods, so for all those years without disturbance, pandas peacefully had the big bamboo forests to themselves, and could reproduce slowly to ensure there is not too many pandas in one forest (as another commenter pointed out). However, this was contingent on things staying relatively constant or only gradually changing as per evolutionary time scales. Just as with any other endangered or extinct animal, its really humans who brought such a fast change that pandas got the short end of the (bamboo) stick.
Dang Stephanie doing a full on hit piece on the Pandas. I'm here for it haha
😂
She did a total takedown on the Sun Fish, and discovered she enjoyed it! I wonder what poor defenceless creature she will slap around next? ;-)
@@loopernoodling also did one on sloths and it was a total character assassination too haha.
@@loopernoodling 🙋🏿♂️
Pandas: *exist*
Stephanie: And I took that personally
"Why do you exist!?"
"Well nobody else is gonna eat all this bamboo, someone's gotta do it."
There is always one weirdo in a family.
in some states it'd weirdo's all the way down the family tree..
Oh yeah. They existed for millions of years, now we judge and make fun of them because they are having a hard time living in a world we butchered. Seems fair.
Right?
I know it might sound crazy, but hundreds of millions of species lived and died before we came along, and the panda looks like one of those that was on their way out anyway.
There's definitely a certain mindset at play here, and it's not a nice one
Panda is not gonna be the first species adopted into a dead end and then go extinct. Most species did, long before humans ever existed
@@ХорхеГарсия-э5е yeah "some" random scientist theorized they would be going extinct without humans ruining their natural habitat. That's a theory, not fact
One of my favourite facts about panda stupidity is you can trick them into raising more than one cub at a time, simply by swapping the cubs out when the panda isn't looking.
Thats super funny
that works on other mammals too..
Actually the mother knows babies are different because smells are different, so she knows both are her babies
You can do this also by some human dads
Extremely well made video! Make more of this kind!!!
Did a panda key your car?
I disagree that "pandas are victims of their own evolutionary choices." Pandas are a function of evolutionary pressures. They never had any say or choice or agency regarding the matter of their evolution. A niche developed and they evolved to fill it.
Evolution is nothing if not simultaneously both opportunistic and lazy. Pandas were always "good enough" to take advantage of bamboo as it grows and probably flourish during mast years (and likely eat chicks and eggs if abundant enough; our chickens come from the same area as pandas, and their fertility is based on the presence of food and potential mates, which explodes when entire bamboo forests flower, go to seed and die, called "mast years").
Try feeding female pandas lots of raw eggs and chicks, see if that doesn't trigger higher fertility.
quit axtually-ing over some poor word choice that was dont on purpose for entertainment - you dont actually look smart doing this
@@xBINARYGODx Someone has a good point about a thing somewhere? Can't have that, can you?
@xBINARYGODx and you just seem RUDE AF
I can hear Larry David explaining them - "It's a shit bear'
Maybe I am a panda
surviving on mac&cheese
I am a panda if you remove the cuteness part.
Panda's happy life.
Your documentary style is amazing
Raccoons are from the same family as bears? WOW didn’t knew that.
Same
They are called trash pandas for a reason...
They're called vaskebjørn for a reason
No, they are not. They are from family Procyonidae, while bears and panda are from family Ursidae. You can see it on the phylogenic tree shown in he video. They do share a common ancestor however.
@@so-ares, that's because they are closely related to the red panda, which is the "true", and the first to be discovered and classified, Panda.
Red pandas are not bears, like raccoons are not, they are from the family "Mustelidae" and bears from "Ursidae", and they are all in the order "Carnivora" along with the Felidae and Canidae families. Raccoons are trash pandas because of red pandas and not giant pandas.
Once, while deep in a Graham Hancock-esque rabbit hole on youtube, i came across the theory of pandas being the remnants of a domesticated animal from an very old civilization of humans that has since disappeared. All that was left of those humans was this pet that had been domesticated and genetically altered so much that it couldn't live without human care. In my thc induced state of mind it all made so much sense
We GOTTA get you on mushrooms
I mean. It makes sense. Imagine if 10,000 years from now humans wonder how the hell derpy lovable and far too trusting Golden Retrievers evolved.
Only the Strong Survive
Pandas: Challenge Accepted 🐼
The problem is that in this day and age the environment favors opportunists and not specialists. But hell, surviving on something that is plentiful and nobody wants to eat is by no means a bad strategy and when done optimally is highly effective kinda like in leafcutter ants, though while they technically only eat fungus they can use practically any leafy organic material to grow them so they are kinda extreme generalist in that regard.
This is the flaw with humans by imagining that animals have duties as we do, to preserve themselves or their offspring, in nature nobody forces you to exist and if the local biosphere allows a panda to take a chill approach to reproduction, hunting and similar aspects of their life more credit to them. Who knows perhaps not having to chase after other animals mindlessly so you can just bring more energy to yourself via food to keep running after other animals, to produce offspring at same pace as rabbits to completely throw off the balance of ecosystem when predators aren't around instead of chilling and eating bamboo all day and enjoy the surrounding nature at your own leisurely pace sounds like sweet deal. Humans are the "intelligent" species that creates wars with it's own species for resources, over use the planet and animals for their own selfish ends and run their lives stressed by their own invented concepts, rules and errands to make more tiny clones of themselves... I think human would be the last creature I'd ask about how to live life to the fullest, and same goes to the usual prey/predator species at large. Pandas got it right!
I have read that the panda’s pseudo-thumb is actually an ancestral trait of arctoidea. The spectacled bear sometimes have a pseudo-thumb despite being short faced bears that are more closely related to typical ursine bears than to pandas.
That's what make both the spectacled bear and panda astonishing is that they are both the last surviving members of each of their own subfamily of bears the short faced bears and the running bear which includes the largest known bears and the only bears in Africa.
Atlas bear ? You mean sub-Saharan Africa @@andrewgan557
Wow! You know bears!😊
@@anniehills3580 I regularly watch moth media and extinct zoo on you tube
@@andrewgan557atlas bear ? You mean in sub-Saharan Africa.
Regarding the poop… have any researchers looked into the possibility that the pandas are picking up herbivore (horse) gut bacteria when they do this?
Only if they ate it. Sure didn't look like it in the video. Good thought, though.
some dogs do this too.. I wonder if they compare notes? (the researchers, not the animals)
No, things don't evolve "for a reason". They evolve because they could.
Evolution is indeed random and does not happen for a purpose. However, the process of evolution takes shape the way it does primarily through environmental constraints. When she says it happens "for a reason," what she means is "there must have been some sort of constraints such that every other version of the panda died out, and this is the only one that survived."
Which I'm sure she might have said if she was trying to be as lingually precise as possible, but that's largely unnecessary because of a little skill called "extrapolation." Most humans are capable of figuring out what she means by "for a reason" without needing clarification, and so do not need such a degree of precision in language.
@@Chameleonred5 Right - the "reasons" are during the evolutionary process. I meant that saying "for a reason" can lead people to look for reasons after the process is finished, such as that pandas evolved to keep bamboo from overtaking the forest. This is a common way of thinking about evolution that can be confusing.
Not for thousands of generations, barring the occasional genetic disorder.
No, things evolve for a reason and very often for the betterment of survival.
@@Chameleonred5 you say people don't need it and yet you get people like this guy above me
- 0:44 They're *also, THE WORST* MOTHERS, EVER !!. Well, probably not the worst (at least in the animal kingdom), but still, pretty bad! 🐼🐼🐼
Panda mothers actually take care of their babies full heartedly. But in wild life, conditions usually doesn’t allow them to take care of twins at the same time, because little ones are always born immaturely.
12:48 "looking for the lowest energy way to get around" what a mood. i would too if I was a fluffy ball like em 😭
Fax 🧃
Maybe they were playing the long game. They plan for humanity to care for them. Because theyre so damn cute
Which is smart
What's going on?
A Real Science video about an animal whose biology isn't *insane.*
To be fair, the alternative title (at 2:55) DOES say: "The Insanely Bad Biology of The Panda". 🙂
I think as much as they adapted to bamboo, they also adapted to eating insects that live within the bamboo which would probably provide a lot of calories for them.
I am now requesting a sequel to this: Why Koalas Are Impressively Bad at Existing
Panda outsmart humans for thinking them dumb and protect them .
Pandas may have found the most inefficient way to avoid extinction but they DID find a way to get everyone else on board with saving them: Being super cute 🥰
This is an episode that deserves the "insane" moniker and yet you didn't use it in the title? For shame lol. These animals are insanely lucky to still be walking this Earth!!
Pandas know they are cute, thats enough for us and them ^___^
I remember visiting Chongqing zoo many years ago.
The pandas were all sitting while chewing on bamboo like they hadn't eaten in months - take a huge 'handful' and run it through their mouths stripping of the leaves like some cartoon animal... one was wriggling about, seemingly with a very itchy bottom. It took the bundle of bamboo it was halfway though stripping, used that to scratch it's own bum, tried to return to eating, decided it didin't like the result and handed the soiled bundle to another panda who eat it, then grabbed a new bundle for itself.
"Sometimes we have to take care of the idiots amongst us" is just such a beautifully wholesome sentiment.
Pandas 🐼 make sense when you remember virtually all herbivores cannot grasp bamboo 🎍, as they don't have hands of the right size, so suck at eating it.
So they have no competition. And no competition makes even a terrible lifestyle viable.
TBF, not a lot of hands in general in the animal kingdom.
I don't know who has been dunked on more at this point by @Real Science, the sunfish, or the panda... But the panda being related to such powerfull creatures such as bears, I think deserves it more. She did my boy sunfish wrong a lot, poor guy, I laughed so hard at that intro too tho 😂
Evolution doesn't have any real laws or regulations it just happens and sometimes it goes horribly wrong, the koala is another evolutionary dead end and are very similar to the panda in their eating habits.
There are birds that have evolved to only eat the nectar of a single orchid species.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of species that are so specialised that they are constantly on the verge of extinction, so the panda is actually just normal and not that different in the game of life.
So if you just fall and roll, you conserve energy? I AM SO TURNING MY HOUSE INTO A PILLOW FORT.
Thank you for calling out the evolution deniers. It drives me crazy how someone can say it doesn't exist with the amount of evidence we have that it does.
As a Christian, denying the existence of evolution is silly.
Same, I don’t get why people act like you can’t believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. Seems like a closed minded way of thinking to think you gotta believe in one or the other
Both can be true and I’m not religious,,, why can’t god have created the Big Bang?
@Da_Juice I've always believed God is capable of evolution. If a person believed that he was capable of all things, he is capable of evolution. The Bible was written at a time no one had an understanding of the world around them, it doesn't make it wrong. The Bible doesn't say God created gravity or the atomic theory, regardless. The Bible says he created all things, so that would include the forces that government the universe as well. Science is a means of understanding those forces. Genesis states 7 days to create...but that was before time existed, so 7 days may be 4 billion of our years, not God's. Or it was just what was understood by the writers of the old testament.
@@theawesomest2850Biblical literalists are an extremely odd and disconcertingly large portion of Christians.
@@JaylaStarr Because just because we can't explain something, doesn't mean magic is involved
Creationists who think the world was created as is; are a true miracle. That this level of stupidity among families among so much information somehow didn't get weeded out millennia ago.
Exactly. She should do a video about how stupid humans are.
it's a cult, abuse can be a way of life, look at the rural isolated corners where speaking in tongues is no reason to get medical help..
Short-sighted comment.
You as an évolutionniste explain to us the case of panda then
Makes more sense then a randomly generating and self ordering universe.
There's a certain school of thought that believes animals "make evolutionary choices." As if pandas woke up one morning and decided, 'Today, I'm going to become a herbivore and eat bamboo'. When I was studying animal behaviour, I was introduced to the concept of the 'best of a bad situation'. Meaning, that animals, when confronted with significant evolutionary challenges, such as predation, will do what they can to survive despite the circumstances they find themselves in. Evolving predator avoidance strategies such as camouflage, flight reaction or diurnal migration, for instance.
It could be that pandas were outcompeted by their ursine relatives, or sought refuge away from predators in dense bamboo forests. Whatever the reason, panda ancestors found themselves being driven into forests where the supply of animal protein was little to none, so had to resort to supplementing their diet with more vegetation than normal. Because the most abundant plant food available was of poor quality, they were obliged to forage longer and eat more to obtain the optimum calories to survive. Lacking animal protein in their diet probably lead to the loss of their T1R1 gene pushing them over into obligate herbivory. Their slower metabolism facilitated herbivory, followed by the acquisition of cellulose digesting bacteria. The 2.4my time period and the ancestral gut length indicates that the switch to herbivory was quite rapid in evolutionary terms.
11:52 That's also the case with sloths, who are extremely slow in the trees and on the ground. But still their claws are strong enough to carry their weight in the canopy.🤔🦥
Some other animals who are suffering from amnesia forgetting their true identity.
See falling down on the ground for millions of years is not a good thing
Pandas: I'm done, i wanna go extinct.
Humans: We are done when I say we are done.
If we can genetically engineer corn we should do it to bamboo for them
They have the power to be a bear but instead decide not to????
Welcome to evolution.
I am sure afraid that the same thing is happening with humans too, they are not Sapiens anymore
If I offered you the ability to spend all day lazing around and eating free food that grew everywhere around you , don't tell me you wouldn't be tempted.
Do you see anything in a bamboo forest they can hunt on?
Given the fact that they share the same continent with three other Bear species (Asiatic Black Bear, Sun Bear and Sloth Bear), other animals like Asian Elephants, Indian Rhinos, Tigers, Snow Leopards, Saltwater Crocodiles, Dholes, Leopards and, historically, Cheetahs, Lions, Paleoxodon and Gigantopithecus, it's no wonder that they decided to isolate themselves in a niche with next to no competition.
Let me tell you that "Giant Panda" in Chinese is 大熊猫, which translates to "Big Bear Cat." It makes sense😉
4:49 And also, the organ called appendix helps herbivores to digest the cellulose in plants that they eat. With carnivores (and most omnivores) that organ has shriveled, as it wasn't needed anymore.🤔🌿
Jungle law: In the wild only the toughest survive .
Panda : 😂😂😂😂
Pandas should be labeled anthropocene dependents alongside domestic cattle. Essentially they survive because humanity conciously allows it. If we even forget that they exist, never mind actually killing them on purpose, they'd go extinct in short order.
Except that they were thriving throughout vast swathes of Asia before Homo Sapiens even existed there. They are endangered because of humans destroying their habitat, nothing else.
De hecho, los humanos los han puesto en peligro de extinción. Posiblemente los pandas vivirían cientos de miles de años más, pero en los últimos dos siglos se ha reducido su población al punto de que si no los mantienen en determinados lugares pueden extinguirse definitivamente.
I guess life ...uh, finds a way
I paused at 2:50 and could not stop laughing =D
People: pandas are the dumbest
Koalas: Hold my beer
Well done. I learned some new things. Thanks!
2:15 There is actually a good reason why pandas do that: horse feces has certain enzymes that protect them from the cold. Because pandas don't hibernate during winter like many other bears, and they can't get enough insulation from bamboo alone, they have to find other ways to keep themselves warm.🐼💩
i dont like the perspective on pandas this video highlights, they could be considered idiots compared to other animals, but they evolved like this for a reason, eating bamboo worked out for them for 6-7 million years and in my personal opinion i think pandas have a different type of intelligence and you can see it in the way they play around a lot, there arent many animals who take life with such ease even in the way they move. pandas attitude towards our reality is different from almost every other animal and thats why we should treasure them even more. there is tremendous value in what pandas stand for in my heart, and i dont agree with the pragmatic view of them being stupid or undeserving of life, thats just harsh and i think we all learned from when we were kids, that things are often not what they seem at first, pandas seem stupid, but maybe you just have to think about it a bit longer, to get why their existence is actually really important.
We could say Pandas have mastered the Zen. If they go extinct, they go. If no, then no. They just are (here)
@iz3823 yeah i agree
@iz3823 yeah i agree
Eh. They seem to do well enough. They've been alive for millions of years and would be doing fine if people didn't fuck with their habitat. Leave it to people to blame the animal for being unable to adapt to a world that people change to suit their own needs.
Didn't the records show they were already declining long before humans showed up?
Remind me to a comic where a guy scream/complain "Why do bears keep attacking our settlement" while bulldozing through forrest
Exactly. Thank you.
It's like when humans shoot a tiger for attacking a villager. Well, you did build your hut inside their territory.
This is probably the best introductory speech ever created in history of man kind since the invention of written word. Subscribed.
3:37 That was most likely because in such dense forests, it's much easier to find plant-based food than to hunt for meat (although tigers also live in same regions, and they're pure carnivores). And pandas are also too slow to catch any escaping prey. They can still sometimes scavenge carcasses left by tigers for extra nutrients.🤔🐯
Fascinating video about the Panda! However, one glaring mistake is that Bears are not true hibernators. They undergo states of torpor during the winter months. The very best hibernators on the planet are Bats! 👍👍🦇🦇
The Red Panda is the true and first Panda, this is the Giant Panda, or false Panda.
"The giant panda was initially considered the "true" panda because of its prominence and size. However, the red panda was actually described and named scientifically before the giant panda, receiving the name panda in 1825. The term “panda” is derived from the Nepali word ponya, meaning bamboo or plant-eating animal."
So the giant panda only is known by the name "Panda" due to its popularity, not by taxonomy. The true "Panda" is the red one.
Do they eat bamboo?
Yes, they do.
Blaming pandas for not having survivability is ignoring that humans destroyed their habitats.
Having a 2-day window to mate out of the entire year is crazy
This feels like it could've been released on April 1st, but I'm happy we get to watch it now
I think the main reason why we still have Pandas in the first place considering all their terrible traits is because of human intervention.
If panda only exists in the US, the tone would be totally different.
We would say "Why Pandas are so cute and chill".
🐼🐼are cute, no matter where they live/comes from, even if they were from the USA.
Human : Panda is bad at everything.
Sloth : Phew!
9:51 why are cats shown to be herbivores in that graph? I get if cats are able to process cyanide in low doses maybe, but they are obligate carnivores. Just sayin.
They are not shown to be herbivores but rather its showing what levels of this enzyme carnivores have as comparison. It isn't much at all. And pandas only have a little more than a true carnivore
@ ah ok, that makes sense. I got confused by the title at the top that said herbivore. Thank you for the clarification! 💕
Hosts intro is the greatest intro to any video ive ever seen. EVER.
Hello, the zoological research from 2021 has called and asked why you still hadn't updated your information on pandas' diet with the recordings of wild specimen eating carrion. It's on youtube too. Besides, it had been confirmed that they will sometimes hunt for pikas and other small rodents.
7:43 Succulent Chinese Meal~
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂