Read About the Red Panda

Red pandas are small, adorable creatures that can be found in the Eastern Himalayas and south-western China. You may not know much about these critters, but you’ve likely seen pictures of them before; they’re renowned for their cuteness. Red pandas are fairly endangered, so learn more about them to raise awareness and do your part in helping them survive.

Appearance

As their name suggests, red pandas are primarily reddish in color, which helps them blend into the trees. They have thick fur that can tend toward brown, with raccoon-like white markings on their heads and black bellies and limbs. Only slightly larger than a housecat, red pandas are about two feet long, including their long, bushy tails that help them balance as they run and jump through trees. Their tails also help them keep warm in the winter since their habitats can become fairly cold.

Lifestyle

Red pandas spend a lot of their time living in trees and lead fairly solitary lives in the wild, except for their mating season. They mark their territories using scent glands and maintain areas of about one square mile. While red pandas are primarily herbivores, living almost exclusively on a diet of bamboo, they’ve also been known to eat birds, bugs, berries, and a variety of other food.

Litters of red pandas generally have two cubs, which are raised in nests that the mothers make in trees. These baby red pandas are usually born between May and July and stay with their mother for around a year before they head out on their own.

Fun facts

In terms of communication, red pandas are mostly silent, though they will use a series of chirps, hisses, and squeaks to talk to one another when necessary. Red pandas are technically considered related to the giant panda, but in reality the two species are not closely related, even though they have the same habitat, similar diets, and physical features.

Current status

Right now, red pandas are considered endangered and it’s believed that there are less than 50,000 remaining in the wild. Their numbers have severely dropped in the last few years, mainly due to deforestation due to logging and agriculture. Even though red pandas do not need large territories, encroaching into their habitats often leads to animals dying as areas are stripped of trees and have no place to go.

If you want to help the red panda, raise awareness about them and donate to organizations that are working to help sustain their population.