image: This image shows a wild panda. view more
Credit: [Credit: Fuwen Wei]
This news release is available in Japanese.
A suite of energy-saving traits, including underactive thyroid glands, allows giant panda bears to survive almost exclusively on bamboo, according to a new study. Yonggang Nie and colleagues report the first measurements of daily energy expenditure (DEE) in these bears, which do not have stomachs designed for such low-nutrient, high-cellulose plants. The researchers studied five captive pandas and three wild ones, discovering that the animal's DEE was just about 38% of the average for a terrestrial mammal with the same body mass. The DEE values for giant pandas are substantially lower than those for koalas, for example, and more akin to those of three-toed sloths, according to the researchers. Nie et al. used GPS loggers to track the bears and found that giant pandas are much less active than other bears. Further research revealed that the animal's brain, liver, and kidney are relatively small compared to other bears, and that its thyroid hormone levels are only a fraction of the mammalian norm -- comparable to a hibernating black bear's hormone levels. Finally, the researchers compared the giant panda genome to those of other mammals, identifying a panda-specific variation on the DUOX2 gene, loss of which is associated with underactive thyroids in humans. Taken together, these results suggest that particularly low energy expenditures and thyroid hormone levels enable the carnivorous-looking panda bears to munch on bamboo all day.
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Note: Science's Digital Media team created a video related to this research that will be available at the following URL when the embargo lifts. http://scim.ag/panda6243 The video explores how pandas make the most of their low-nutrient bamboo diet
Article #10: "Low daily energy expenditure and metabolic rate in the bamboo-eating giant panda," by Y. Nie; J.R. Speakman; Q. Wu; Y. Hu; L. Yan; L. Wang; W. Wei; F. Wei at Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China; J.R. Speakman; C. Hambly at University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, UK; C. Zhang; M. Xia; J. Zhang at Beijing Zoo in Beijing, China.
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Science