Giant pandas might get most of the media attention, but red pandas (Ailurus fulgens) are in just as much trouble from a conservation standpoint. Habitat fragmentation is the greatest threat (as it is with many species), outside pressures from humans worsening the situation for these animals as they have a naturally occurring slow birth rate and high death rate. As with other animals from Asia, products made from various parts of the red panda are important to various ceremonies and the animals are still hunted and poached, especially for their hides. The individual above was photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
They sit there, mostly curled up, mostly asleep, high up in tree-tops, sometimes chewing on bits of plants. But little known is that, deep within their furry little heads, they harbour an unknown desire: to take over the world...
Pet peeve # 113 concerns pandas: it's the generally held notion that…
A red panda (Ailurus fulgens, left, photographed at the Bronx Zoo) and a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, right, photographed at the National Zoo).
As the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould observed in one of his most famous essays, the thumbs of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are…
In the previous article we looked at the discovery of the Red panda Ailurus fulgens, and also at some aspects of its biology and distribution. There's so much I didn't cover: Red panda physiology is bizarrely interesting, for example. In this article we're going to look at the Red panda's fossil…
The traditionalist Chinese, for all their deep philosophies of unity and transcendence, sure love to slaughter rare and beautiful animals for their own vanity.
Apparently, it is still acceptable in China to give hats made from the fur of poached red pandas as traditional gifts for special…
Hooray! This is the second-favorite animal at the zoo for my wife and me, and we snapped some wonderful pictures of it the last time we were there. (Our favorite, though, is the slow loris.)