Jump to content

Talk:Giant panda

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 193.77.143.67 (talk) at 08:52, 12 January 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Picture

Tim - nice picture. Did you take this picture? It would be nice to have a comment on where/when it was. If not, it should have a real attribution. --Alan Millarhi test una poloma vlance

This is Hua Mei, the baby panda born at the San Diego Zoo nearly two years ago. It was taken summer 2001 when she was a little over 1 year old. - Tim

Translation of the week

As I advised on the translation of the week pages: Please, rewrite the parti-coloured bear and Genma Saotome paragraphs. The meaning is not bovious to those who do not know it. Aliter 03:06, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


is the list of panda zoo locations up to date? --ShurTape 23:21, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)


I've rewritten the section on the naming of the Giant Panda, mainly to consolidate the information in one paragraph. Although it reads somewhat better than it did before, there is one important problem: its factuality. Could someone confirm that the Giant Panda was indeed known as the Mottled Bear or Parti-coloured Bear?

I've also tried to de-emphasise the Sinocentric nature of the article. We know that it has become a lovable symbol of the Chinese state, but is this reason for placing such emphasis on the Chinese name? (Can you find any other animals that get such treatment? The Tanuki was about the only one I could find). The listing of the Chinese name, and only the Chinese name, for the Red Panda is even more reprehensible as this animal is not found only in China.

panda isnt a chinese word. they call them xiong mao.

Bathrobe

Why does this page have a zoo links section? It doesn't seem to add much. I can't see a reason to select one zoo with a giant panda over any other. There might be an argument for a complete list of zoos with pandas, but it is not a very strong argument. I certainly wouldn't want to see it extended to every other page on large mamals. -- Solipsist 05:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd argue that since there are only a few zoos that have giant pandas (due in large part to China's policies about shipping bears abroad and CITES) and those that do have pandas tend to have pretty good panda subsites with lots of information about the research being conducted with them, as well as panda cams and other geegaws, that the links here make sense. But you're right, there's no need for links to every zoo with a giraffe/elephant/lion/etc. Carter 22:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
To add to that, there's only a select number of Pandas found in zoos outside of China. So that's why the links are useful. Is that list comprehensive though... cuz some animals are on like 10 yr leases before they need to be returned to China. --Madchester June 28, 2005 21:12 (UTC)
It is all the U.S. zoos; Mexico City is missing, and the pandas in Japan and Hong Kong; I think there maybe one or two other European zoos that now have pandas, but I'm not certain. 29 June 2005 01:54 (UTC)
I've seen the Pandas in Hong Kong, but that's part of China anyway. --Madchester June 30, 2005 01:02 (UTC)
Well to some extent it was this edit by an anon, switching Zoo Atlanta for San Diego Zoo that prompted my interest. Perhaps the Panda had moved, or perhaps the anon was trying to promote one Zoo over the other. There was no edit summary so I don't know.
From the discussion above, I think it would be better to change this from a list of Zoos Links, to a comprehensive list of Pandas in Zoos, for example giving their name, age, gender, zoo, and loan status. -- Solipsist 30 June 2005 07:12 (UTC)

Carnivore? Herbivore?

Despite being taxonomically a carnivore, their diet is overwhelmingly herbivorous. They eat shoots and leaves, living almost entirely on bamboo. Pandas are also known to eat eggs and some insects along with their bamboo diet.

  • What is "taxonomically a carnivore"? Joyous June 30, 2005 02:12 (UTC)
It means the panda is classed under the order Carnivora. Mark1 30 June 2005 05:07 (UTC)
Kudos to those who managed to sneak eats shoots and leaves into the text. Keep it this way. :) --Mzabaluev 13:32, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Kind of a shame the commas were missing. Joyous (talk) 14:42, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Lots and lots of Pandas

I'm not really a part of this page, but I have to ask: Are you sure that there are 1,600,000,000 (1.6 billion, that is) pandas in the wild? and if so, why are they endangered? Just wanted to bring that up before some elementary school kid uses this in his/her report.

That was a little piece of vandalism that's been reverted. Thanks for catching it. Joyous (talk) 17:23, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Panda names

Thee giant panda has had over 30,000 names in its lifetime Can someone get a source for this? --Adamrush 17:00, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's been changed again, to I think 300000,000 names in its lifetime. Why are people so lame? Mikeythetiger 07:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bamboo "hard to digest"

There has to be a better way of describing this. A diet staple shouldn't be described as "hard" to digest. It might be a low-nutrition diet, or it might be indigestible, but presumably, pandas aren't staying away from bamboo because of the effort involved.

Since a description of panda feces adds so little to an otherwise interesting article, I'm deleting it. Should someone want to put it back, may I suggest, "Their primary diet of bamboo is evident in their feces."

The original troublesome sentence was: "Pandas find bamboo hard to digest, which leads to their feces being green in color and full of undigested bamboo." RPellessier (Talk) 16:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reproduction

"Mating is also a very noisy time, accompanied by moaning and squealing." Is this really necessary? It seems to me to be a rather gratuitous statement.

Merging

It was suggested at Butterstick that that article be merged into this one. I personally oppose this merge; I'll be removing the merge tag in a few days if nobody objects. No reason that one giant panda needs to be mentioned in this article, it would be America-centrism. Meelar (talk) 01:40, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, famous pandas can have their own articles :) Matthewmayer 17:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. -- Миборовский U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai! 02:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Natural enemies

What are the natural enemies of the panda? Is it the top of the food chain? Why could it 'degenerate' into this slow, highly unsuccesful at reproduction kind of creature it is?--Heidegger 04:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Effectively none. A tiger might take an odd one, but it would have to be a very brave tiger. Therein lies the problem; animals with few or no predators have adapted to have very low population increase rates, to avoid overpopulation. When a predator (man) does appear, it has no easy ability to recoup the losses. - MPF 23:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that those skilled in Panda arousal techniques can earn significant sums of money - why has this been deleted?!!!

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:Giant_panda&oldid=34868739"