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BambooBaby
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Pandas and Bamboo |
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Panda Bears eat a LOT of bamboo and like a range of flavors. At
Bamboosa, we are often asked, "Do you make your bamboo products from
the same bamboo that pandas eat?"
Giant pandas and red pandas eat over 30 species of bamboo and our species, Moso: Phyllostachys pubescens, is not among the list. Moso is the largest temperate bamboo species and is too big for either panda to eat.
They eat smaller bamboo plants that they are able to grasp with their paws.
Our research also found that the habitat and food supply of the Giant Panda
is definitely shrinking, but found no evidence or link to the bamboo
cultivation for fiber. It seems that the culprit is the increase in
population in China and the cutting of forest to make way for that
development.
Panda bear cubs are extremely vulnerable while the mother is away feeding
on bamboo. During this time, the newborn is subject to predation by any
number of predators. Cubs will stay with the mother for the entire first year to year and
a half and are driven off by their mother as she prepares to
breed once more.
The survival of giant panda cubs is totally dependent on the skill of the
mother in both protecting them and teaching them the basics of what to eat,
where and how to get it, how to cope with danger and all the other skills
of living in the wild.
To read much more about the Giant Panda and see the Panda Cub, Tai Shan - follow this link to The National Zoo!
And check out the Panda Cam - you might see a panda munching on bamboo.
Bamboosa has developed our very own adorable, handmade Panda Bears made of Bamboosa's beautiful terrycloth and stuffed with Nature-Fil bamboo fiber. See the BambooBaby Panda - a safe, cuddly and soft pal for the baby in
your life.
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| Bears keep me humble. They help me to keep
the world in perspective and to understand where I fit on the spectrum
of life. We need to preserve the wilderness and its monarchs for
ourselves, and for the dreams of children. We should fight for these
things as if our life depended on it, because it does.
- Wayne Lynch (Bears:Monarchs of the Northern Wilderness, 1993)
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