FACTS ABOUT HOPE

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Giant Pandas have a lot in common with people who have any form of Digestive Tract Paralysis. Here are some facts:

 

Giant Pandas: 

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Are endangered

 

Digest only 17% of what they eat (bamboo). Most of what pandas eat is useless bulk that passes through their digestive systems without providing nutrition.

 

Intestines are 5-7 times the length of their bodies

 

Must spend as much as 14-16 hours a day eating to get enough nutrition

 

Are barely able to eat enough food to get all the calories they need so they have little energy to spare

 

Are about the size of a stick of butter at birth

 

Have an extra digit to help grab bamboo. It looks like a thumb, but it is part of the wrist bone

 

Bamboo, their main food source, is primarily made up of fiber and has very little useful nutrition

 

Have molars 5x the size of human molars

 

Sleep about 10-14 hours a day

 

Babies do not open eyes until about six weeks old

 

It takes so much energy for them to eat so they need to sleep a lot

 

About 50 Giant Pandas weigh as much as one elephant

 

They can trot like horses and swim

 

They have poor eyesight and may walk right past their food

 

Some snore!

 

They are not predators

 

Newborns can fit into the palm of a human hand

 

They are born pink with little fur

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As you can see, a number of those facts make the Giant Panda great to represent DTP! We have a lot in common! Can you relate to any? 

 

Here are some other interesting facts about Giant Pandas: 

 

They are Omnivores

 

Genus/species name is ailuropoda melanoleuca

 

They eat with their back legs stretched in front of them using their forepaw so to hold their food. The extra digit helps!

 

They tend to be solitary

 

They have slightly oily hair on the bottom of their feet to keep them dry in their damp habitat

 

They communicate by leaving their scents and claw markings on trees

 

They have scent glands under their short, bulky tails

 

Their scent markings leave info including age, gender, and identity

 

They have a vemeronasal organ behind their teeth which help them interpret smells

 

Share features of a cat such as slit-shaped pupils in their eyes and pads on their paws. Their Chinese name is daxiongmao meaning "large bear cat"

 

For every six million people in the world, there is 1 giant panda

 

Sometimes they eat flowers, berries, small animals, or fish, but bamboo is 95% of their diet

 

Their esophagus' have a tough lining to protect it from bamboo splinters

 

Their stomachs have strong muscles for mashing and digesting bamboo (what we HOPE for!)