Scientists in China made an observation about giant pandas and bamboo, the food they have been long assumed to prefer.
According to BBC News, the animal cannot digest bamboo efficiently, but continues to eat it. The giant panda is known to spend 14 hours a day eating 12.5kg of bamboo, but in a new study published in the journal mBio, researchers found the animal digests about 17 percent of the intake.
The giant panda's ancestors ate both plants and meat and a number of studies suggested the animal should be eating that way as well. The new research shows the giant panda does not have the right gut microbiota to digest bamboo efficiently.
"This result is unexpected and quite interesting, because it implies the giant panda's gut microbiota may not have well adapted to its unique diet, and places pandas at an evolutionary dilemma," study co-author Xiaoyan Pang, an associate professor at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, said in a press release.
The scientists found the giant panda's digestion of bamboo fluctuated with the seasons due to stalks becoming less common in the fall. They are planning to conduct more research on the animal's unusual gut microbiota.
"Unlike other plant-eating animals that have successfully evolved, anatomically specialized digestive systems to efficiently deconstruct fibrous plant matter, the giant panda still retains a gastrointestinal tract typical of carnivores," study lead author Zhihe Zhang, director of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, China, said the release. "The animals also do not have the genes for plant-digesting enzymes in their own genome. This combined scenario may have increased their risk for extinction."
