A team of researchers from Michigan State University (United States), led by Zhang Jindong, has discovered that the panda or giant panda ( Ailuropoda Melanoleuca ) has three peaks of activity throughout a day : in the morning, for the afternoon and midnight. This is the main conclusion of their study, published in the Journal of Mammalogy , after analyzing the data collected on five GPS necklaces attached to five individual panda bears in the Wolongo Nature Reserve, in southwest China.
This casts doubt on the notion held by animal experts that pandas are primarily creatures of the night. Therefore, the authors of the study believe that pandas should no longer be classified as twilight animals and that a category of their own and exclusive to them should be created. That is, a species that is active at dawn, dusk and in the middle of the night, unlike properly diurnal animals (active only during the day) and nocturnal animals (active only at night).
The five pandas targeted by this investigation – three adult females (Pan Pan, Mei Mei and Zhong Zhong), a young female and a male named Chuan Chuan – were captured in 2010, when the collars were placed on them. They were subsequently monitored between 2010 and 2012. According to Zhan Jindong, it can no longer be said that the panda is a twilight animal.
Giant pandas display complex activity patterns that are closely related to water quality and availability. Jindong has also assured that these peculiar bears need to eat food very frequently, since bamboo has a very low nutritional quality. The study of the activity patterns of pandas opens a door to discover the peculiar ways of adaptation to their environment of this endangered species.
