奇速英语

熊猫不是独居动物

The Chinese government recently issued a panda conservation report. The wild panda population, as is said, has increased nearly 17 percent to 1,864 pandas and panda habitat also has improved.

“Pandas are such an elusive species and it’s very hard to observe them in the wild, so we haven’t had a good picture of where they are from one day to the next,” the researchers said.

Jindong Zhang, a co-author of the report, said “This was a great opportunity to take a look into the panda’s secretive society that has been closed off to us in the past,” he said. “Once we got all the data in the computer we could see where they go and map it. It was so fascinating to sit down and watch their whole year unfold before you like a little window into their world.”

Researchers say that rather than being lonely animals, in fact pandas enjoy hanging out together. Three in this group were found to be in the same part of the forest at the same time—for several weeks in the fall and outside the usual spring mating season. “We can see it clearly wasn’t just a good luck, we could see they were in the same locations, which we never would have expected for that length of time and at that time of year,” Zhang said. “This might be evidence that pandas are not as lonely as once widely believed.”

Scientists said they learned about a panda’s feeding strategy from this surveillance period. Many animals in the wild have a home range, and within that a core area they frequently return to and defend. Pandas have as many as 20 or 30 core areas, which scientists said might be a reflection of their feeding strategy. “They pretty much sit down and eat their way out of an area, but then need to move on to the next place,” researchers said.

Specific locations may also have other importance for pandas to return to if they are communicating with neighboring pandas at certain vantage points.