Why Are Pandas Black and White? What Science Says

The main answer: camouflage in two kinds of habitat

Most bears are a single color, so the giant panda has long puzzled biologists. In 2017 a team led by Tim Caro of the University of California, Davis, published a study in the journal Behavioral Ecology that tested the main ideas. The researchers divided the panda into many body regions and compared each region with the coloring of many other carnivores and bears, looking for links with habitat, behavior and diet.

Their conclusion was that the pattern is a compromise. Pandas live in mountain forests that are snowy for part of the year and dark and shady for the rest, and because they eat poor-quality bamboo, they cannot build up enough fat to hibernate. They are active all year, so they need to stay hidden in very different conditions:

• White areas (face, neck, belly, back and rump) match snowy ground and bright backgrounds.
• Black areas (legs, shoulders and arms) match dark tree trunks, bamboo thickets and deep shade.

The authors suggested that because a single coat color could not work in both settings, pandas evolved a combination.

Do pandas really blend in?

To many people a panda looks anything but hidden. A follow-up study published in 2021 tested this with photos of wild pandas in their natural habitat. It found that the coloring does help pandas blend in. At a distance, the bold black and white patches break up the panda’s outline, an effect called disruptive coloration, so the shape of the animal is harder to see. Up close, the black patches resemble dark shadows and tree trunks, and the white patches match lighter foliage and snow.

The pattern is most important for young pandas. Healthy adults have few predators, but cubs and young pandas can be killed by leopards, snow leopards, Asian black bears, martens and birds of prey.

Why do pandas have black eye patches and ears?

The head of a panda does not follow the camouflage rule as neatly, and the 2017 study proposed communication instead:

• Black ears may help pandas look more fierce. Many carnivores with dark ears are aggressive species, and a panda’s dark ears could act as a warning signal to rivals or predators.
• Black eye patches vary in shape and size from panda to panda and may help pandas recognize each other. Eye patches might also make a panda’s stare look bigger and more threatening during confrontations.

These communication ideas are less certain than the camouflage explanation and are still being studied.

Ideas that do not seem to hold up

Over the years, scientists suggested several other reasons for the coloring:

• Body temperature. Black fur absorbs heat and white reflects it, but the study found no strong link between panda coloring and heat control.
• Warning coloration. Some black-and-white animals, such as skunks, warn predators they are dangerous. Pandas are not toxic or smelly enough for this to be a convincing explanation.

Are all pandas black and white?

Nearly all of them. The exception is a tiny number of brown-and-white giant pandas from the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi, China, where a separate subspecies lives. The first was found in 1985. Their coat is light brown where other pandas are black. The best known, a male named Qizai, was rescued as a cub and lives at a center in the Qinling region.

Brown pandas seem to be more common in Qinling because the population there is isolated and small. In 2024 Chinese researchers reported a genetic mutation linked to the brown coat, which appears to be recessive: a cub is brown only if it inherits the variant from both parents.

Changing color with age

Giant panda cubs are born pink, with fine white hair. Within the first couple of weeks the skin darkens where the black fur will grow, and by about one month the familiar pattern is complete. The fur gets thicker and coarser as the cub grows. For more on newborns, see how big is a baby panda?

Black and white in other animals

Pandas are not the only animals with bold black-and-white patterns, and the reasons differ. Zebra stripes appear to deter biting flies, skunks use their pattern as a warning and many seabirds, such as puffins and penguins, are dark on top and white below to hide from predators above and below. The red panda, despite its name, is reddish brown and blends with mossy, lichen-covered branches in its Himalayan forests. To learn how the two pandas are related, see are pandas bears?