Red Panda vs Giant Panda: Are They Related? Key Differences

Key differences at a glance

The giant panda is a large, black-and-white bear found only in central China. The red panda is a small, reddish tree dweller with a long ringed tail that lives along the eastern Himalayas and in southwest China. The table at the top of this page sums up the main differences in size, family, range and status.

Are red pandas and giant pandas related?

Only very distantly, in the way all members of the order Carnivora are related. Both pandas are carnivorans, the large group that also includes cats, dogs, bears, seals and weasels. Within that group, however, they sit on different branches.

The giant panda belongs to the bear family, Ursidae, as the oldest surviving branch of the bear family tree. The red panda is the only living member of the family Ailuridae, which belongs to a group called Musteloidea together with raccoons, skunks and the weasel family. The two lineages split tens of millions of years ago.

For more than a century, scientists argued about where the pandas belonged. Some grouped them together, some put both with raccoons, and some placed the giant panda with the bears. DNA studies from the 1980s onward settled the question, as described in are pandas bears?

Size and appearance

The difference in size is huge. A red panda is about the size of a house cat, with a head and body 51–63.5 cm (20–25 in) long and a weight of usually 3–6 kg (7–13 lb). A giant panda is a bear, with a head and body length of about 1.2–1.8 m (4–6 ft) and an adult weight of about 70–125 kg (150–275 lb), with some large males heavier.

Their looks are just as different. The red panda has thick reddish-brown fur, black legs and belly, a pale face with white markings and a long, bushy tail with red and buff rings. The giant panda is white with black ears, eye patches, legs and shoulder band, and it has the short tail and heavy build of a bear.

Diet: two bamboo eaters

Both pandas are carnivorans that have become mainly plant eaters, and both depend on bamboo. Yet they eat it differently.

The giant panda’s diet is about 99% bamboo, and it eats shoots, leaves and the tough stems, which it crushes with huge jaw muscles and broad molars. It eats around 12–38 kg (26–84 lb) a day. The red panda eats mainly the tender leaves and shoots, more than 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) of leaves a day, and adds much more fruit, acorns, blossoms and occasional eggs or small animals. Neither has a gut adapted to digest plant fiber well, so both must eat large amounts. Details are in what do pandas eat? and what do red pandas eat?

The false thumb: a case of convergent evolution

Both pandas have a “false thumb” on each front paw: an enlarged wrist bone, the radial sesamoid, that works against the fingers so the animal can grip bamboo stems. For a long time this was seen as evidence that the two were close relatives.

Scientists now think the thumbs evolved separately, a process called convergent evolution, where unrelated animals develop similar features because they face similar challenges. Fossils of extinct red panda relatives show that the red panda’s thumb first evolved as an aid to climbing and was only later used for holding food. Studies of the two pandas’ genomes found changes in some of the same genes linked to limb development and to the bamboo diet, an example of evolution reaching similar solutions twice. The giant panda’s false thumb is larger and gives it more dexterity.

Range and habitat

Giant pandas live only in China, in six mountain ranges in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, mostly at about 1,500–3,000 m (5,000–10,000 ft). Red pandas have a wider but narrow range from Nepal through India, Bhutan and northern Myanmar to Sichuan, Yunnan and southern Tibet, mostly at about 2,000–4,300 m (6,600–14,100 ft).

The two live together on some mountains in Sichuan. There they reduce competition by using different parts of the forest: red pandas prefer steeper slopes with logs, stumps and shrubs, and giant pandas favor gentler slopes. Red pandas spend much of their time in trees, while adult giant pandas mostly stay on the ground.

Behavior and breeding

Both are solitary and mark their home ranges with scent. Red pandas are mostly active at dawn, dusk and night and rest in trees during the day. Giant pandas can be active at any time because they must feed for 10–16 hours a day.

Red pandas mate from January to March and have one to four cubs, usually one or two, after about four months. Giant pandas breed in spring, give birth to one or two tiny cubs in late summer and usually raise only one. Giant panda females breed only every two years or so, so their numbers grow more slowly.

Which one is more endangered?

On the IUCN Red List, the red panda is in more danger. It is listed as Endangered, with a population thought to have halved in about 18 years and estimated at around 10,000 or fewer. The giant panda is Vulnerable: there are fewer giant pandas, about 1,864 in China’s 2011–2014 survey, but their numbers are rising thanks to a large network of reserves, while red panda numbers are falling.

In China, red pandas benefit from giant panda reserves. Across most of their Himalayan range, though, they depend on community conservation and protected areas created for other reasons.

Can they interbreed?

No. Red and giant pandas belong to different families that separated tens of millions of years ago and have different chromosome numbers. They cannot produce hybrids, and there is no record of them doing so.