We had some really great threads last year, with the following four nominated for the Thread of the Year award in this January's Environment Site Awards ceremony.
Wildlife and Biodiversity ForumIn the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.
- John Sawhill, The Nature Conservancy
Pandas have been ridiculed for their decidedly non-bearlike vegetarian diets, their apparent lack of interest in—and aptitude for—sex, their tendency to spend the majority of their time sitting, eating, scratching, and defecating. These rather "unfit" characteristics have made the giant panda a favorite animal of creationists.
No evidence of any evolutionary "mistake". The reason it survived is because of ecology - which literally means the relationship between organisms and their environment. Evolution or the adaptation and optimization of the Panda as a species to the resources available in the habitat depended more on the suitability of the environment for the species, than the suitability of the species for its environment.
Its large size gives it the advantage of having no natural predators. Bamboo is (or was?) abundant and readily available in its native habitat. I am not sure of the other fauna in the area, but it is possible that there was insufficient prey (of an appropriate size) for it to be carnivorous. The main downside of eating mostly bamboo, of course, is that it would have to consume very large quantities almost continuously (with obvious consequences). Their apparent reproductive "inefficiency" is a strategy for keeping them at relatively low populations in the context of their size and traits they developed in their acquired habitat.
I have to confess I have wondered this myself in a rather tongue-in-cheek way. A Panda is after all a myopic creature that only eats the very tips of bamboo shoots - i.e. it can't even see its own food source.
You got to love em though and bamboo is an amazing plant, one of the best renewable crops going. When you harvest it you don't need to kill it, and it just grows back, you can make cotton from it and god knows what else. Plus it can be grown and promoted in its natural environment rather than having to resort to land clearance for a plantation. Despite all their environmental faults, the Chinese have come up with some truly remarkable and inventive ecological initiatives in recent years - one of my favorite being a project I was asked to source drill pipes for a few years ago, which were to be used in Northern China to heat a million or so homes with thermal energy.
I love Pandas, they're great As for whether they're an evolutionary mistake, surely the simple fact that they have evolved in the first place would suggest that they aren't.
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thats all i have to say about that
Could Pandas be an Evolutionary Mistake?
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