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Panda Evolution Explained | Curious Cabinet | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Panda Evolution Explained
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Core Theme
Giant pandas, despite their unique bamboo-only diet and perceived reproductive challenges, are evolutionarily successful bears that have adapted to their niche, with their current endangered status primarily due to human-induced habitat destruction rather than inherent biological flaws.
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Bears are nature's vacuum cleaners.
Though they're part of the same
carnivore order as wolves and big cats,
they have one of the most varied diets
of any animal group, eating everything
the natural world can provide. From
berries and fungi to meat, fish, and
even insects. It's part of what has made
bears such a successful and widespread
group, with the brown bear in particular
once roaming across the entire northern hemisphere.
hemisphere.
This makes the panda with its vegan diet
of bamboo seem very odd indeed. These
black and white beasts don't fit the
bear blueprint to the point that
scientists didn't initially think they
could be bears at all. Pandas were first
discovered by a French missionary in
1869. And though originally described as
Ursus Melanucas or black and white bear,
they were soon ousted from the Ursa and
placed in a separate family alongside
the red panda which also lives in China
and has converged on many of the same
adaptations like large bamboo mers and a
bony pseudo thumb for gripping their
favorite snack.
Modern molecular methods eventually put
an end to a century of debate. DNA
demonstrates that pandas are indeed true
bears and red pandas more closely
related to raccoons and weasels. But
their diet remains a distracting puzzle.
By adapting to eat the hard woody stalks
of bamboo, [music] pandas have found a
food source that won't run away. But
because pandas are carnivora and lack
the robust guts and cellulose degrading
gut bacteria of more established
herbivores, it's also a food source that
they struggle to digest.
This means in order to survive on
bamboo, the panda has to stuff itself
for 15 hours a day and spend most of the
rest of its time asleep. A bit like the
koala with its toxic eucalyptus habit,
it's had to adopt a low calorie
lifestyle, conserving energy whenever possible.
possible.
This addiction to bamboo, combined with
a legendary reputation for refusing to
reproduce, has given the panda a very
bad name. You don't have to look far to
find advocates calling for their
extinction. If the lazy pandas can't be
bothered to continue their own species,
why should we intervene? The argument goes.
goes.
But if pandas are so bad at existing,
then how did they evolve in the first
place? How could natural selection shape
a creature to be totally inept? Let's
dive into panda evolution and find out
exactly what we're missing.
The story of the panda starts 19 million
years ago when it split off from the
most recent common ancestor of the
bears. Pandas were the first to diverge,
making them the equally distant cousins
of all other living bear species. The
early history of the panda tribe is
shrouded in mystery. And it's not until
11 million years ago [music] in the
midst of the Mayene that we find our
oldest known panda relative, Cretzotos.
Instead of China, Cretzotos lived in
Western Europe, which had a warm
tropical climate in this period. It was
much smaller than modern pandas. In
fact, it was even smaller than the sun
bear, the most petite modern bear
species. Like most small bears, Crestos
was probably a good climber, and the
scientists who named it think it mostly
fed on plants and would scramble up
trees to escape the large amphisanid
bear dogs that were the dominant
predators of the age. Yet, the animals
teeth, which along with its jaw is about
all that's actually been found of
quartos, show that they had a much
broader diet than their descendants. A
recent study shows that grooves and wear
on the teeth of this species are more
comparable to omnivorous black and brown
bears than to pandas.
It's hard to pin down exactly what an
omnivorous bear ate, though, especially
from just a handful of fossils because
the same species can have vastly
different diets between regions across
seasons and over extended periods of
time. For instance, over the last 100
years, brown bears on the Japanese
island of Hkaido have gone from eating
60% meat to less than 10% meat. This is
because the Hkaido wolf was driven
extinct, and the bears would get most of
their meat by musling in and stealing
deer carcasses from the more fleeted
predators. Without the wolves to catch
their deer for them, the brown bears now
mainly live off fruit and herbs. That's
just one example that show how this
animal group can adapt to what's
available in its habitat. It's likely
the panda's ancestors could pull off the
same trick, becoming more vegetarian
when prey was in short supply, perhaps
as a way to avoid competition with other
species. If this way of life was
sustained long term, they would
gradually start to adapt for herbivy.
Pandas stuck it out in Europe for a long
time with the last known species,
Agratos Nicolivi, living up to 5 million
years ago. It was a planteater, but it
didn't have strong enough teeth to crush
the woody stalks of bamboo and probably
ate much softer vegetation.
Long before the pandas died out in the
west, they had already made the move to
China, and this is where their bamboo
eating seems to have got started. Elotos
lived 8 million years ago in China and
Southeast Asia. Like a modern panda, its
teeth were covered in complex grooves,
which could mash through tough plant
fibers, working a bit like a meat tenderizer.
tenderizer.
But we have more than just teeth to talk
about now with the first appearance in
the fossil record of the panda's strange
sixth digit, its makeshift thumb. This
thumb is actually a massively expanded
wristbone, the radio sesimoid, which
works like a pinser, helping pandas grip
bamboo tightly while their jaws go to
work. When you need to eat 100 lb of
bamboo a day, anything that makes the
process more efficient becomes an
invaluable survival tool.
Islo Arthus actually had a larger grip
than modern pandas and over time the
fake thumb grew shorter and more hook
shaped. [music] Scientists think this
was to prevent it protruding too much
and to present a flatter surface to the
ground allowing modern pandas to keep a
strong grip while not hampering their
ability to walk.
The red panda also has the bamboo
grasping pseudo thumb. And while it's
initially bamboozled, it's now held up
as an amazing example of conversion
evolution. The two species both came to
eat bamboo, so they evolved the same
tool. But that may not be the whole
story. While the red panda's wristbone
thumb definitely grew large to help the
animal hold stalks, scientists now think
it was originally used for locomotion.
The fossil record shows red pandas had
this feature before they became bamboo
eaters. So, it probably developed to
help them grip slender branches, much
like us apes and our opposable thumbs.
In the panda with its patchy fossil
record, the origins are less clear. But
because the spectacled bear also has a
small pseudo thumb and this was the
second bear species to split off from
the common ancestor, some scientists
think this digit was an original feature
of the Ursid family, one that was then
lost in the Ursa bears. With the bears
large body sizes, they wouldn't have
been nimly scampering across thin
branches. So their thumbs probably did
develop for manipulating food, [music]
but for grasping plants that weren't bamboo.
bamboo.
One last wrinkle, some distantly related
carnivorans like the palm civet engineet
also have large radial sesimoids. So
it's just about within the realm of
possibility that this was actually an
ancient climate adaptation of the very
earliest tree dwelling carnivorance from
60 million years ago. One that was then
lost in many species to allow for faster
movement on the ground. But for whatever
its origins, the isoartis thumb size
combined with its strong teeth suggest
that by now pandas had bamboo on their
menus. But we have to jump forward in
time to see the first appearance of
another trademark feature, their mighty
jaws. Yes, you heard that right. Pandas
have very powerful mouths with one of
the strongest bites of any bear species.
A panda's massive head may make it look
sweet, but its purpose is to allow room
for large jaw and cheek muscles, which
it uses for some serious chewing. Pandas
have highly reinforced skulls to
withstand the forces their awesome jaws
throw out. Their skulls are stronger
than polar bears, which mainly eat the
soft, nutrient-rich blubber of seals and
don't crunch on bone.
While they may look harmless, panda
strong bites make them dangerous when
provoked. And there are many cases of
pandas attacking people who
Over a span of four years, one panda
called Goooo in Beijing Zoo hospitalized
three visitors foolish enough to enter
his enclosure. [music] Each time
treating the intruder's legs like big
pink bamboo stalks to be chomped on. In
one of these attacks, Goo bit through to
the bone and Zustaf had to use tools to
pry its jaws open.
We start to get really good skull
remains from about 2 million years ago
with the species is microa considered
close enough to the modern pandas to be
part of the same genus. Its skull shape
is very similar shown that this aspect
has stayed largely the same since at
least the late plyioene. It was a
smaller animal though only about 2/3 the
size of a modern panda at 1 m in length.
Entering the plea scene we meet the
imposing isupola bacon which was very
similar to modern pandas only larger. It
seems these bears tried out a couple of
different sizes before landing on one
that was just right. Now, we followed
the pandas from their European origins
to their current form, but we still
haven't solved the mystery of when they
became bamboo only feeders. It seems the
foundations for holding and chewing
bamboo were laid millions of years ago.
But one study which examined chemical
isotopes in ancient panda teeth found
they had more varied herbivorous diets
as recently as 5,000 years ago. So
perhaps the switch was more recent.
Scientists have worked out how pandas
survive on bamboo despite their simple
stomachs and short guts. Though by
looking at what pandas eat on the
nutrient level, we figured out they're
getting roughly as much of their energy
from protein as hyperinivous animals
like wolves and cats. They do this by
being selective, prioritizing different
types of bamboo and different parts of
the plant throughout the year, migrating
between different altitudes in their
mountain habitats to follow the
proteinrich young shoots.
So, the question why pandas eat bamboo
may be starting with a false assumption
that there's something wrong with
bamboo. While they're less active than
other bears as a result of their diet,
pandas can get the energy and nutrition
they need from bamboo alone. And the
plant is abundant and grows incredibly
fast. And because no other animal, not
even the red panda, [music] can tackle
their tough stocks the way giant pandas
can, they avoid competing for their
dinner. [music]
It's true they have to eat for long
periods to get enough food, but that's
true of many planteating species,
especially large animals like gorillas,
giraffes, elephants, and [snorts]
pandas. It's not a unique weakness. I
also found a study from 2025 that
suggest another utterly bizarre
possibility that bamboo may actually
want to be eaten. Chinese researchers
took blood from pandas and found 57
different microarnas, which come from
bamboo in the animals bloodstream.
[music] These microRNAs do all sorts of
things. Regulating genes by stopping
particular proteins from being produced.
But some of the bamboo ones the
scientists found in pandas affect
dopamine metabolism [music] and the
processes through which smells are
converted into a signal in the brain.
The idea here is that material from
bamboo has hopped over to pandas and is
making bamboo smell better, taste
better, and feel good to eat. It's
completely unbelievable and I can't find
anyone else really talking about it. So,
it feels like this might have been a
strange fever dream, but no, here it is
in a proper scientific paper. Here's the
theory it was based on from 2023. Weird,
weird, and wacky sci-fi type stuff. It
would be interesting to consider an
alternative history for the panda.
Imagine a spec evo project exploring a
sister species to these bears. one that
not only maintained an omnivorous diet
but actually became more carnivorous
over time eventually giving rise to a
hunter killer panda that terrorized the
plains of some other continent say North
America okay now stop imagining it
because all of that actually happened
[music] after the pandas split from the
rest of the bear lineage they split
again we follow the branch of Isa podini
because that's the one that gave rise to
the pandas but the agaran went in a very
different direction the earliest known
species the omnivorous And Dartos lived
11 million years ago just like Cretzotos.
Cretzotos.
But while that bear is walking the path
towards herbivy, indoss is its twisted
mirror image, meat became a steadily
more important part of its diet.
These renegade path pandas would
culminate in the late measene with the
huracan genus. Sometimes described with
the epic name storm bear, [music] this
apex predator had a massive skull and
strong canines for shearing through
flesh and bone. It also had long limbs.
Rather than opportunistic hunters like
black and brown bears, Huracan would
chase down its prey like a lion, using
its immense bulk to bring down anything
it could catch. Huracan was very
successful and survived in North America
until about 4 million years ago. The
cause of its extinction is not exactly
clear, but what is clear is that on the
other side of the world, the pandas with
their plant-based diets were soldiering
on. So, we've established that bamboo is
not so bad, but what about their lack of
interest in the opposite sex? Surely
that can't be a good survival trait.
Well, it turns out this is just panda
slander. It's more or less a myth. The
idea that pandas are sex shy has been
around since at least the 1940s when the
first specimens in American zoos sparked
headlines like this one from Life
magazine. But this was hardly fair,
unbiased treatment from the press
because it turned out the animals they
were trying to make were both male.
Another high-profile example was London
Zoo's famous Chi-Chi. Once star of a
children's TV show, and now still in the
spotlight, but looking rather less
lively at the Natural History Museum,
Chi-Chi was handed by keepers. As a
result, the panda sexually imprinted on
the wrong species. This deviant
preferred humans to other bears. With
famous failures like this one, it's not
hard to see why the reproduction rumors
stuck. [music] Pandas are very hard to
breed in captivity. Obviously, that
makes conservation efforts tricky, but
it's true for thousands of other animals
from cheetahs to leafy sea dragons and
even other bear species like sun bears.
It's also true that female pandas are
only fertile for a few days a year, but
that's again also true for elephants,
moose, and brown bears. It's a strategy
that ensures offspring are born at the
right time of year, [music] and in the
wild, it doesn't present a problem. In
short, there's nothing especially
unusual about pandas mating habits.
Their population has shrunk not because
of a design flaw, but because of habitat
destruction, which has restricted their
range to a small band of mountainous
terrain in central China.
The pandas population collapse maps onto
the rise of agriculture in our own
ancient history, as well as the
increased deforestation in recent years.
Panda numbers have recovered recently
from 1,100 to 1,900, and as a result,
they've become a symbol of conservation.
But the fact is, rather than graciously
rescuing the pandas from their own
design flaws, we're the villains that
put them on the brink in the first
place. Evolutionary, the pandas were
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