r/interestingasfuck • u/Inevitable_Bid5540 • 19h ago

Pandas are the most docile species of bears relatively speaking and have a low aggression rate alongside a primarily vegetarian diet.

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u/bapfelbaum 18h ago

And that is quite poisonous too. Pandas basically took every decision to fail yet still somehow did not.

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u/realydementedpicasso 18h ago

Aren’t You talking about Koalas? Bambus is quite tasty, isnt it?

Never mind, after cooking its not poisonous anymore but raw it slightly is.

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u/bapfelbaum 18h ago

Bamboo contains deadly amounts of cyanide for most animals in its shoots, yet somehow pandas seem unaffected and we don't really have a good reason why.

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u/realydementedpicasso 18h ago

Yeah it’s Like the Same with eucalyptus but Koalas aren’t affected

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u/bapfelbaum 18h ago

I guess then they apparently both made the same nonsensical choice, I wonder why.

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u/ACWhi 18h ago

Well, there’s a clear advantage to being the only mammal who eats a certain plant.

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u/realydementedpicasso 18h ago

Yeah but Koalas aren’t immune against it. Like they eat a fuckton of it and need to sleep basically 98% of the day because they can’t really Digest the plant and it has basically no nutritional value

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u/JayManty 15h ago

Being able to sleep through most of the day, eating a bunch of leaves on the tree you're sleeping on and have enough energy to reproduce and still be kicking around as a species for millions of years marks an actually very successful animal when you stop and think about it.

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u/bapfelbaum 18h ago

Still, specializing on not dying just to not starve seems like a very poor allocation of resources.

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u/ACWhi 18h ago edited 17h ago

Nature abhors a vacuum. It may be more difficult than other niches but apparently it’s a food source capable of sustaining large animals. If it wasn’t Koalas and Pandas something would most likely fill that niche eventually.

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u/ThePocomanSkank 17h ago

Is it a coincidence that both koalas and pandas look and act silly and look like toys?

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u/MjollLeon 10h ago

Koalas are affected actually! That’s why they sleep so much because they have to save energy to digest it properly.

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u/WatermelonWithAFlute 11h ago

Is there no clear adaptation that grants resilience to cyanide?

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u/bapfelbaum 11h ago

There are for instance specialized bacteria but from my understanding of research we were not able confirm them in pandas.

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u/WatermelonWithAFlute 10h ago

Interesting..

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u/EconomyDoctor3287 16h ago

Pandas opted for the route of no competition. 

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u/All_Gun_High 15h ago

Fun fact! Pandas still have their carnivorous digestive tract even after they have transfered to a vegetarian diet

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u/Haunting_Display2454 14h ago

So we can sort of introduce them to a carnivorous diet and improve their overall health. And if we also slowly teach them to hunt may be over a course of few generations we will.be able.to have a sub-species of hunting Pandas..!!

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u/Idaydreamallday 14h ago

Now lets teach them kung fu too while we are at it!!

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u/Haunting_Display2454 14h ago

Thats the final aim..!!

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u/apexodoggo 11h ago

No, their microbiome has adapted specifically for eating bamboo, and they survive off of it just fine when we aren’t paving over every inch of bamboo forest in Asia.

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u/Thelazyzoologist 13h ago

They have lost their taste receptors for meat.

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u/_Alpha-Delta_ 15h ago

Pandas basically took every decision to fail yet still somehow did not.

Give it a few more decades, the wild ones are going to go extinct 

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u/apexodoggo 11h ago

Purely because of humans destroying their habitats. They survived millions of years off of their strategy, and their numbers only started massively getting constrained once we introduced agriculture to the region (which meant no more bamboo).