their unique diet?

hey Josh Bernstein here

i'm at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park the National Zoo is

located in Northwest Washington DC where 2,000 animals live on a 163 acre urban

park

i'm here to see the zoo's biggest attraction giant pandas

there's the male Tian Tian the female Mei Xiang young and their baby girl

Bao Bao giant pandas are truly unique

they are bears and should be carnivores but they mostly eat plants

I want to know what type of external adaptations allow them to do this to

to explore this question of arranged to meet panda caretaker

Marty Dearie Marty's job is to tend and feed the giant pandas which means

providing their main food source

bamboo

come on into our bamboo shed it's humid in here

yeah so we keep it nice and humid by misting and running air conditioning

that's the noise you're hearing each bear can spend about 13 to 16 hours a day

doing nothing but eating bamboo

it's easily ninety to ninety-five percent of their diet you need to spend

a lot of time eating it just to get the nutrients they need out of it

more than 5 million years ago giant pandas began eating bamboo but no one is

sure why this change required them to physically adapt to a new diet

bamboo is tough hard to chew and hold for example pandas have developed an

oversized wrist bone that serves as a thumb called a pseudo thumb

this allows them to hold bamboo and strip the leaves from the stalks more

efficiently pandas also have dental and skull adaptations such as small canine

teeth flattened molars thick skull bones a very round cranium and large jaw muscles

these allow them to chew the tough bamboo they eat

can you show me how the bamboo goes from here to the pandas absolutely

let's go Marty instructs me to grab a bundle of bamboo and place it on the

floor of the ship

prepping it for transport to the weighing area so the best way to move it is

just to literally pick it up and kind of hook it right onto your hip then

just pull

so what you're going to want to do is actually put it right here on this

scale

that's good and then we just see how much there is you've got ten just about

10

okay and how much did they get at a time so she's gonna get 18 tonight while bamboo

is a large majority of a panda's diet

they're also fed other plant based foods for enrichment by varying the pandas'

diet caretakers ensure that they're not missing any vital nutrients or minerals

so you said ninety to ninety five percent of their diet is bamboo right

what's the other five percent well the other five percent we can go and see it if

you want it's in the kitchen

lead on alright

Marty and I head to the kitchen where the other foods are prepared I'm going to show you

some of the other stuff that we feed our pandas we want to make sure that

nutritionally they're getting everything that they need

carrot I understand nothing too exotic apple and then what's this

it's sweet potato we cook it because for whatever reason they won't need it raw

how much vegetables and fruits if varies on the size of the animals so

Tian Tian our male gets more than Bao Bao who's you know a baby he weighs 280 she weighs 60

so

ok we also feed them something called a leaf-eater biscuit a leaf-eater biscuit

leaf-eater biscuit soy protein primarily there's other things in it

is this something I shouldn't be eating I don't know hopefully not seriously

no you're good I've eaten them you have I don't want to eat them again but

yes tastes like cardboard

yeah by varying the food's the keepers have created a diet to keep the pandas

healthy and happy

the pandas even get dessert so this is what we call a fruitcicle

it's just diluted apple juice with some apples and pears cut up and it's a treat

think of giving dessert to a child that's the afternoon pick me up exactly the cookie

exactly

we usually give the popsicles sort of at a time of day where we know that they're

are starting to look for something but we're not quite ready to give them like

their next meal it just so happens that that time is now and Marty has offered to let

me serve Tian Tian his afternoon snack Tian Tian

ok wow he's totally following the sound of your voice and the only rule is do not

hit don't hit the Panda and just basically go

right there yes

kind of up the hill from him a little bit it's not the distance that concerns me

it's my accuracy and the crowds watching I don't want to hit the nation's beloved

giant panda with a block of frozen fruit but what if it rolls down it's ok

he'll find it

we're good to go go ahead yeah all right

this isn't very far I'm just gonna oh he can catch it is that good

yeah will that work yeah that's good the public will be happy

if he sits there perfectly I fed Tian Tian

you're welcome he's very happy now

honestly I'm grateful I didn't hit him so what external adaptations do pandas

have for their unique diet we learned today that giant pandas are carnivores

but they have modified paws skulls teeth and jaws that help them eat plants

but these adaptations are only part of the story

the panda has amazing internal adaptations too in the next episode we'll

explore how pandas cope with eating low nutrition bamboo and go into the panda

yard to see what the final product of their digestive efforts looks like

namely panda poop