The Giant Panda

Good evening to our lecturer, Chef Shakir and to all my lovely friends. My name is Nurul Shahanum and today I will to present my speech about “The Giant Panda”. The giant panda is also known as the panda bear, bamboo bear, or in Chinese as Daxiongmao (the large bear-cat). Its scientific name is Ailuropoda melanoleuca. Giant pandas are found only in the mountains of central China. They live in dense bamboo and coniferous forests at altitudes of 5,000 to 10,000 feet. The mountains are covered in heavy clouds with torrential rains or dense mist throughout the year. Giant pandas are bearlike in shape with striking black and white markings. The ears, eye patches, legs, and shoulder band are black. The rest of the body is whitish. The Giant Panda commonly grows to about 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 metres) long and has a short tail. Adults weigh about 90 to 140 kilograms. However, unlike the bear, giant pandas do not hibernate and cannot walk on their hind legs. The giant panda eats bamboo shoots, as well as bamboo stems and leaves. Pandas grasp the bamboo between their fingers and an “extra thumb”. This thumb, which is a bone covered by a fleshly pad, grows from the wrist of each forepaw. Pandas also have true thumbs, which they use as fingers. Unlike most plant-planting animals, pandas have inefficient digestive systems that cannot easily change plant food into energy. As a result, pandas must eat large quantities of bamboo to get enough energy. For example, giant pandas eat as much as 39 kilograms of bamboo shoots per day. Giant pandas are among the rarest mammals in the world. There are probably less than a thousand left in the wild. Although adult giant pandas have few natural enemies, the young are sometimes preyed upon by leopards. Habitat encroachment and destruction are the greatest threats to the continued existence of the giant panda. This is mainly because of the demand for land and resources by China’s