What Do Red Pandas Eat? Bamboo, Fruit and Other Foods

A bamboo specialist

The red panda lives in temperate mountain forests where bamboo grows thickly beneath the trees. Bamboo is available in every season, even under snow, which makes it a dependable food. Studies of droppings in Nepal, India, Bhutan and China have found bamboo in almost every sample, often making up well over three-quarters of what the animals ate.

Red pandas feed on several kinds of bamboo, depending on the area, including species of Thamnocalamus, Yushania, Bashania and Phyllostachys. In one study in Wolong Nature Reserve in China, bamboo leaves appeared in about 94% of droppings.

Red pandas are picky eaters. Instead of eating whole stems, they choose the youngest, most nutritious leaves and leaf tips. In spring and early summer, when new shoots push up from the ground, they switch to these juicy shoots, which are richer in protein and easier to digest than old leaves.

Fruit, acorns and other foods

Bamboo is not the whole story. In summer and autumn, when other plants are ripe, red pandas eat:

• Fruit and berries, such as wild kiwi relatives (Actinidia), whitebeam berries, wild roses and brambles
• Acorns and nuts from oaks and related trees
• Blossoms, young leaves and roots of forest plants
• Lichens and mushrooms
• Animal food on rare occasions: birds’ eggs, nestlings, insects and small rodents

Fruit is especially valuable because it is rich in sugar, which gives quick energy. In winter, when fruit is gone, red pandas rely almost entirely on bamboo leaves.

How much does a red panda eat?

Because bamboo is so poor in nutrients, a red panda must eat a lot of it. An adult weighing about 3–6 kg (7–13 lb) eats more than 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) of fresh leaves a day, or up to about 4 kg (9 lb) of fresh shoots.

That means many hours of feeding. Red pandas usually feed around dawn, dusk and at night, with long rests in between.

Why bamboo is hard to digest

Red pandas belong to the order Carnivora, the same group as cats, dogs and bears. Their digestive system is still that of a meat eater: a simple stomach and a short gut, without the fermenting chambers that cows or deer use to break down tough plant fiber.

As a result, bamboo leaves pass through a red panda in only about two to four hours, and the animal digests only a fraction of what it eats, roughly a quarter to a third of the dry matter. It gets the most from cell contents such as protein and fats and lets most of the fiber pass straight through. Gut bacteria may help a little, but nothing like the way they help a rabbit or a cow.

A low-energy lifestyle

To survive on such a poor diet, red pandas save energy wherever they can. They spend a large part of each day resting or sleeping in trees. In cold weather they curl into a ball with the thick, bushy tail wrapped over the body and face, and their dense fur, including fur on the soles of the feet, cuts heat loss.

Red pandas also move slowly and carefully while feeding, and they choose feeding spots where leaves are easy to reach, such as fallen logs and stumps beside bamboo clumps. All of this keeps the energy they spend close to the little energy they take in.

How red pandas feed

A red panda usually eats sitting or standing on the ground, on a log or in a tree. It reaches out with a front paw, grabs a bamboo stem and pulls it toward its mouth. It then bites off the leaves with the side of its cheek teeth and chews them before swallowing. Small items such as berries and blossoms are nipped off with the front teeth instead.

The front paws have an extra aid: a “false thumb”, an extended wrist bone that helps the panda grip stems. Fossil relatives show that this thumb first developed for climbing and was later put to work for holding bamboo. The red panda’s cheek teeth are broad, with many small points for shredding leaves, and its jaw muscles are strong for an animal of its size.

Red panda vs giant panda diets

Both pandas eat bamboo, and in parts of Sichuan, China, they live in the same forests. They avoid competing by using bamboo differently. The giant panda eats stems, shoots and leaves and often feeds on gentler slopes, while the red panda focuses on leaves and shoots and prefers steeper slopes with plenty of logs and shrubs. The red panda also eats far more fruit.

The two pandas reached their bamboo diets separately, since one is a bear and the other belongs to its own family. Compare them side by side in red panda vs giant panda, or read about the larger animal’s diet in what do pandas eat?

Why food matters for red panda survival

Because red pandas depend so heavily on bamboo, anything that destroys the forest understory threatens them. Cattle and yak grazing tramples bamboo, and logging opens the canopy and changes how bamboo grows. Bamboo also flowers and dies over large areas every few decades, and red pandas then need nearby patches of other bamboo species to survive. Protecting large, connected forests gives them that choice, as explained in are red pandas endangered?