If I recall properly, the defining characteristics of marisupials include the baby-climbing-from-womb-to-pouch thing and some unique features of their dentition. However, I seem to also recall that baby pandas are incredibly small, and are born only to latch onto a nipple for a good while longer as they develop. This seems a great deal like marisupialism (?) without the benefit of a pouch to me. Does anyone know of other placental mammals that display this developemental pattern?
Also, cavewoman is on a panda kick just now, having not only “adopted” one (they sent us, I kid you not, a Panda paint-by-number) but also serendipitously seen both the National Zoo and Zoo Atlanta pairs. Were else in North America can one see these two-tone teddies?
Where else? [http://www.sandiegozoo.org/special/pandas/pandacam/index.html]The San Diego Zoo for one - Hua Mei was the first baby panda born in the US to survive more than a few days. She and her father, Shi Shi, are on display (yada yada - click around) while her mother, Bai Yun, is in seclusion due to another possible pregnancy. Now that the San Diegans have the hang of ovulation timing and artificial insemination, and Bai Yun’s established mothering credentials, look for more cubs out there.
The cam this links to showed what looked to be pretty normal mammal mothering behavior by Bai Yun. She stayed pretty much motionless for the first week or so, not even going away for water, until the cub was big enough to be carried. When that happened, she carried the cub with her mouth, like a cat, not in the way you describe. The baby cub is the size of a puppy, not marsupial-tiny.
You’re correct about marsupial mammals giving birth early in the pouch and developing there, but an important difference between marsupials and pandas is that pandas do have a placenta and longer gestation period, a luxury marsupials cannot provide.
You could say that human development is similar to that of pandas, although the human gestation period is longer and we give birth to larger cubs. Our young are similarly dependent on parents for sustenance and protection. There may be better candidates for similarity to panda young, and hopefully someone who knows about them will come along and bail me out here.
You can also find Giant Pandas at the San Diego Zoo here in North America.
I believe bears in general - certainly polar, brown, and black bears -give birth to very undeveloped young (and pandas are in fact a kind of bear). In several species, birth takes place in the winter den, so the altricial young are not exposed to the outside world until they are better developed.
Actually, Panda’s share some bear type characteristics and IIRC racoon-type characteristics. From what I understand, Panda’s really are a very unique species.
If you want to see a lot of pandas, make a trip to China. The Chengdu zoo has quite a few and it’s pretty cool when the cubs are awake and cavorting around. You can also go to the Wolong Panda Reserve, which has a large breeding program. I think a 1 year panda cub sponsorship goes for about USD5,000. Jiuzhaigou National Park and Panda Reserve is also in the general vicinity, and was where they filmed “The Last Panda.” Odds of seeing a panda in the wild are about equal to being hit by lightning, but these reserves are pretty nice.
Where did you guys adopt a panda and what was the basic deal besides getting the paint by numbers thing?
Well, mothernature.com was tanking, so along with a few deeply discounted honey & cornmeal soaps, cavewoman ordered this packet for about $7 (usually $10 or so, IIRC). It had an informational packet, and photos of three pandas from zoos aroud the world. The deal was, pick one, mail the card in, and the profits derived from selling you the packet would go to that panda, and we get a panda newsletter about every other month, along with “opportunities” to further donate. Not bad, and it slakes her need for both conservation activities and panda whatnot in one shot. The paint by numbers thing cracked us up, because the color key was “1=black”.
The relationships of the Giant Panda and the Lesser Panda have been debated for a long time, and in the past they were often placed together in their own family, the Ailuropodidae. However, recent DNA work has established that the Giant Panda is in fact more closely related to the bears, while the Lesser Panda is closer to the raccoons. At present, the Giant Panda is usually placed in the same family as bears, the Ursidae.
Even more extreme than you might have remembered. I recalled that the birth weight of black bear cubs was about a pound - the mother bear doesn’t even wake up from hibernation during birth. A bit of poking around yields statements like:
From http://www.nature-net.com/bears/black.html . Note that we are talking about the young of a 300 or 400 pound animal here. IIRC, Grizzly cubs are almost as tiny and the mother is even larger.
The Giant and Lesser Pandas share a few traits, most notably a disproportionately heavy skull and tooth structure, and both have an enlarged sesamoid bone in the forepaw. This is higly enlarged in the Giant Panda (“the Panda’s Thumb”) and slightly enlarged in the Lesser. However, these similarities are now thought to be convergent due to the fact that both eat tough bamboo (the sesamoid “thumb” being used to manipulate the stalks).
I should add that there is still some controversy over the genetic data, but I believe the present consensus put GPs with the bears and LPs with the raccoons.
