Geography 316:  Biogeography     In progress 5/14/99

The Biogeography of Giant Panda
by Joanna Cheung, student in Geography 316

 Photo source: Laidler. 1992.  Pandas, Giants of the Bamboo Forest

Species Name: Ailuropoda melanoleura

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ailuropodidae, or Ursidae, or Procyonidae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Species: Ailuropoda melanoleura

Giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleura, is an endangered species. Living solely in the mountains of central China, it has been known to the Chinese for more than two thousand years. The French missionary Pere Armand David was the first westerner who introduced it to the west. Ruth Harkness was the first one who successfully exported a giant panda out of China alive. Fossils of giant panda date back to the Pleistocene period and they show a wider distribution in those days. All carnivores evolved from the same ancestor, the miacids. Yet scientists have not yet come to a compromise of which family the giant panda falls into and whether the giant panda and the lesser panda are from the same family or not. Studies of radio-collared giant pandas showed that they are solitary animals but not territorial. Their home ranges are clearly defined.

     The giant panda belongs to the phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, and order Carnivora. The controversies of whether the giant panda belongs to the bear family, Ursidae, or the raccoon family, Procyonidae, are still under debate. (Collins 1973) Meanwhile, Chinese zoologists contend that it should be classified as belonging to another distinct taxonomic family, Ailuropodidae. (Zhu 1980) For certain period of time, three names Ailuropoda, Ursus melanoleuca, and Aeluropus were used in scientific literature for the giant panda. Nevertheless, the scientific name, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, remains stable in recent years with ailuropoda meaning cat-footed and melanoleuca meaning the large black and white kind. (Collins 1973)

     China is the native home of the giant pandas. Giant pandas are found exclusively in the mountains of central China. They distribute within a limited area of the southern range of the Qin Ling Mountains in Shaanxi province, the Min Mountains bordering southern Gansu province, and the Qionglai and Balang Mountains, the Great and the Lesser Xiang Hills and Liang Mountains in Sichuan province. (Zhu 1980) See Map 1. The mountains of these three panda provinces are divided into several vertical floors of vegetation. Different plants and animals are bounded to specific altitudinal zones that are classified according to their temperature and elevation. (Laidler 1992) The giant pandas inhabit the dense bamboo forests at altitudes from 5000 to 10,000 feet where temperature is cold and there are heavy clouds, stormy rains, and dense mists all year. Also, rushing water and foaming rapids are found in these mountain areas, and winter snow does not melt until June. (Collins 1973) In Mammals of China and Mongolia, Dr. Glover M Allen stated that these mountains areas were “the most interesting and remarkable of the faunal divisions of China.” Allen claimed that boreal mammals, that were once widespread across Eurasia, were pushed south by the glaciers in the north during the Pleistocene era. Since these animals could not overcome the barriers of the east-west deserts of the Gobi and central Asia, they ended up living in the western highlands where the giant pandas are now found. These boreal animals cannot survive outside of these mountain regions. Moreover, that the peaks are too cold and steep for agriculture also account for the vast diversity of species at these mountain areas. (Sheldon 1975)

Map 1. Source: Panda, Giants of the Bamboo Forest

     Giant pandas have long been inhabited in China. They appeared in Chinese literatures for more than two thousand years. Also, they have been highly treasured throughout history and their skins were used as gifts or tribute on national events. Yet they were totally unknown to the west until the decline of the Qing Dynasty in the late nineteenth century when China was forced to open her doors to trade and Christianity. Through collecting plants and animals from the areas of their missions and sending them back to their native countries, the Christian missionaries allowed many Chinese wildlife known to the West. (Catton 1990)

     Pere Armand David is the priest who first made the giant panda known to the west. Born in Basque, David’s interest as a child was collecting insects, plants and birds’ eggs. David’s father was a doctor, a justice of the peace, and a mayor, and he had hoped that David would follow his footsteps. However, David’s very ambition was to be a missionary. During the twelve years (1862-1874) in China, apart from being a science teacher and realizing that it would take forever for China to become Catholic, he discovered over a hundred species, and some of them were named after him. On his third collecting trip that began in May 1868, he traveled from Beijing to Shanghai, and through Yangtze River to Chengdu in Sichuan province. See map 2. On March 11 1869, he first saw a giant panda skin, and within the following three weeks, he obtained two dead giant pandas from some local hunters. For several decades after this trip, little was heard about the giant panda except a few skins and skeletons purchased by other missionaries from the Chinese hunters were sent to some European museums. (Catton 1990)
 
 

Map 2. Source: The First Pandas

     In November 1928, Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt, with the political support from their father, President Theodore Roosevelt, traveled to China for giant panda hunting. They successfully killed a giant panda on 23 April 1929. In the 1930s, the Western expeditions’ goal was to capture a live giant panda and ship it to a zoo instead of to shoot one. In September 1934, Harvard graduate William H Harkness Jr. began his trip to China for a live giant panda, forbidding his newly-wed Ruth Harkness, to come with him. But he died in 1936 before he could see any giant panda alive. It was Ruth who gained fame by bringing a live giant panda to the United States. Ruth went to China in less than a year after her husband’s death. With luck she easily brought a baby giant panda, Su Lin, back to the United States, and her book The lady and the Panda published in 1938 became a best seller. (Catton 1990)

     Fossil records of the giant panda are found throughout China. The oldest ones dated back about three million years ago with no specific ancestors. It is believed that there were two giant panda species living during the Pleistocene with one species about half the size of the current ones date from the early Pleistocene and the other species indistinguishable from the current ones date from the Mid-Pleistocene. Fossil records indicate that both species ranged over China but the Yellow River and Yangtze River lowlands (the eastern plains of China). See map 3. The lack of fossils in these regions maybe due to the poor fossilization in the alluvial plains rather than the absence of the animals. These fossils were found at forty-eight sites in fourteen provinces in China. Some were found in Vietnam and in one site in Burma. Almost all the fossils date from the Pleistocene era. These records also show that these species used to have a much wider distribution than the one of  today. It maybe due to the warmer and wetter climate during the Late Pleistocene period that was more favorable to the animals and the bamboo. Also, population expansion is thought to be one of the reasons that accounts for the decrease in the giant pandas’ distribution. (Laidler 1992)

Map 3. Source: The Last Panda

     It has been debated that whether the giant pandas belong to the bear family, the raccoon family, or another family including only the giant pandas and the lesser pandas (the red pandas). Yet that to which family the giant pandas belong remains a mystery. Although today’s giant pandas feed almost completely on bamboo, they are in fact carnivores. Carnivores’ ancestors are miacids that is small weasel-like, forest-dwelling animals. About thirty-five million years ago, some of the miacids developed into the earliest dogs, the canids. The canids further branched off to evolved into different animals. About twenty-five million years ago, some of the canids “diverged away from chasing and killing prey to” procyonids, the early ancestors of the raccoons that originated in North American and spread to South America. Another branch of procyonids that were the ancestors of the lesser pandas spread to the Himalayan region. Several million years after these procyonids evolved into these animals, some other canids began to evolve into much larger animals that they became the bears. They originated in the Northern Hemisphere and spread southward to southern Asia and South America except Africa. (Collins 1973)  See figure 1.

Figure 1. Source: Ling Ling & Hsing Hsing: Year of the Panda

     Whether the giant pandas and the lesser pandas are related to each other or not is another unsolved issue. Some biologist consider the two pandas are not related claiming their similarities come from convergent evolution. They place the lesser panda into the raccoon family, the Procyonidae, and the giant panda into the bear family, the Ursidae. Other biologists consider the two pandas are relatives having the same evolutionary root. Some of them place both pandas into a separate family while the rest put them into the raccoons’. In 1985, Stephen O’Brien and his coworkers conducted DNA hybridization tests in which proteins from both pandas, bears, and raccoons were compared. In their publication, they concluded that the giant panda is a bear and the lesser panda is a raccoon. However, another investigation conducted in the same year after this one concluded that “the two pandas are more alike than are either giant panda and bear or lesser panda and raccoon." In 1989, O’Brien performed another experiment and the conclusion further confirmed the one he made in 1985. Yet in 1991, Zhang Yaping and Shi Liming came up with a conclusion based on the analysis of mitochondrial DNA from the two pandas, Asiatic Black bear, and sun bear. It said that the giant panda is more closely related to the lesser panda than to the bears and the similarities between the two pandas are the result of convergent evolution. (Schaller 1993)

     A thirteen square miles area in Wolong Nature Reserve was studies for the social organization of the giant pandas. George B. Schaller and his team radio-collared seven giant pandas for eleven months to obtain their movements and activities. Combined with indirect observations as droppings, bark scratching, and tree biting, they concluded that the giant pandas were solitary animals, they lives by themselves as individuals instead of in groups. The giant pandas seldom met their neighbors but males and females must meet to court and mate. They also have clearly defined home range where they spend all their solitary lives, but these ranges do not defend themselves from their neighbors. See map 4. Furthermore, they neither patrol nor scent-mark the borders of their home ranges. The males’ ranges overlap both other male’s and as many females’ as possible whilst the females’ ranges do not overlap each others’ and are located in the best areas with better food, microclimate, nesting sites, and foraging. (Laidler 1992)

Map 4. Source: Panda, Giants of the Bamboo Forest
 
Physically, the giant pandas are white bear in shape with the ears, eye patches, legs, and shoulders in black. Their thick and woolly fur insulate them from the cold. Adult giant pandas are about four to six feet long and weigh up to three hundred and fifty pounds. They do not hibernate and cannot walk on their hind legs. Moreover, they almost feed exclusively on bamboo and records showed that they consumed up to forty pounds of the nutrient-poor bamboo each day. (Sheldon 1975)

Being one of the rarest species and a beloved animal known to the world, the giant panda is used as the symbol for the World Wild Fund. A lot of conservation works as establishing reserves and captive breeding for saving the giant panda have been conducted. Yet if public awareness is not encouraged, the giant panda will become a once-alive animal in the near future.
 

Bibliography
Catton, Chris. 1990. Pandas. New York, NY. Facts On File Publications.
Collins, Larry R., and James K. Page, Jr. 1973. Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing: Year of the  Panda. Garden City, NY. Anchor Press.
Laidler, Keith, and Liz Laidler. 1992. Pandas: Giants of the Bamboo Forest. London. BBC Books.
Schaller, George B. 1993. The Last Panda. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.
Sheldon, William G. 1975. The Wilderness Home of the Giant Panda. Amherst. University of  Massachusetts Press.
Zhu, Jing, and Yangwen Li. 1980. The Giant Panda. Beijing, China. Science Press.

Photo source: Laidler 1992. Pandas, Giants of the Bamboo Forest

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