Pandas

Pandas are born blind, bald, and helpless. They weigh four ounces and live alone with their mother. They live on their mother's milk until they can leave the den and eat bamboo.

In China, where all wild pandas live in the mountains, there are forests with hundreds of varieties of bamboo. There are twenty varieties eaten by pandas. Each panda only eats four or five of the twenty. If the bamboo they eat isn't available they will starve to death.

Pandas are cute and cuddly looking. They have black and white fur on black and pink skin. They grow to five feet tall and two hundred pounds. They have related DNA with bears. Pandas have thumb-like bones called radial sesamoids to help them hold bamboo.

The diet that makes pandas unique, also makes them vulnerable. The government of China has established large preserves to protect pandas from their greatest enemy - loss of habitat. Pandas are endangered; we must prevent their extinction. _