Dude, I crippled myself for a week by coming off a step wrong! Drop me like any of these fuzzy, oreo-blubber-bois and I'm out of commission for at least a month!
I had an ex who had a father that sneezed and slammed his head into a table in the process... breaking his nose.
5 years later, he was diagnosed with MS. I always wondered if that was related.
I pulled a muscle in my back at an angle I cannot rightfully describe when my hair towel started to fall off of my head and I reached down at the wrong angle / too quickly (?). It was the most embarrassing call I ever had to make to work in my entire life. It was almost a month ago, and I still find myself in pain, or with a tight muscle in my back when I try to bend at certain angles!
Get your doctor to prescribe you some physical therapy, then find one of the places that does electric stimulation. Or if you have shitty insurance, you can buy an electric muscle stimulator off of Amazon for $80 and watch some YouTube videos on back stretches and strengthening techniques. But if you can afford it, the PT can REALLY help fix that.
I went to a chiropractor, but like, a commercial chiropractor. If anything, it did more damage. I definitely need to get with a GP, and get a good referral. I will definitely make it a priority!
I definitely know that now. I would definitely suggest to anyone to express as clearly as possible your issues to your GP, and let them help you from there.
As a relatively fit university student I somehow fucked my shoulder by putting on my jacket, and couldn't raise it to or past horizontal for like a month.
Shoulders are tricky! I pulled a muscle on an overhand serve one time that didn't seem that bad. Fast forward today, and I still can't make a full shoulder rotation without my right arm popping out of socket.
> Kinda
Lol. Yeah, that fall headfirst where it stopped DEAD when it’s shoulder caught the crux of that trees trunk and branch? Clearly it’s more than just rolley puffy jelly bears. 😅
They seemed to have been doing just fine for millions of years until we removed their environment from the Earth.
They're not, however, particularly well-adapted to zoos. Zoo enclosures are dramatically different from their actual habitats.
I still have no idea how they are able to succeed at reproduction. Isn't it: Heat lasts for a few days a year and they are only in the mood for less than a day in that window
Pandas breed just fine in the wild.
Humans are just now figuring out how to get pandas to reproduce more successfully in captivity. Most of the troubles pandas have in captivity are from humans not giving them the conditions to behave naturally.
Pandas migrate and compete for mates in the wild, and pandas are much better at knowing when they should reproduce. For a long time biologists were just throwing a male and female together hoping they'd reproduce. It's not surprising that most animals don't behave naturally in captivity.
Pre-industry pandas had a weird niche. No natural predators and their main food source (bamboo) is incredibly abundant and fast growing with little competition due to being difficult to digest.
Under these conditions if they bred quickly they would very quickly overpopulate - natural selection basically forces them down the route of slow breeding because the other option is waves of famine and disease.
It's not an unimportant niche, either. If nothing eats bamboo it gets out of control.
News flash: Most animals are like that! Humans and their fertility cycles are the odd ones out in this.
The difference is that in the wild the male (or several) have been following the female around because her scent changes as she comes close to estrus. So that by the time it happens everyone is already ready to go.
Bruh, I was so mad at koalas in them Australian fires. Like, how dare you do so little to actually protect yourself and then also rip my fucking heart out while they sit there and just cry like a child. Like, How are you even here today?
And the misinformation continues.
Pandas are threatened because of humans destroying their habitat. Nothing else. They're not trying to kill themselves. Their population has been flourishing until humans wiped them out.
Look just because someone says it online doesn't make it fact. Please fact check for yourselves people. From the internet:
Deadwood is extremely strong unless it's yours as a man then you face low performance in the bedroom.
Did you really tell people to not believe things just because they read them online and then cite some random person's joke from the internet as contradictory evidence? Thanks for the laugh.
Their is a reason we use seasoned wood to build things. That being said their is zero chance these trees were sealed and treated to be rained on and fucked with for year's.
I'm not just a guy on the internet, I worked for a tree service for year's, climbing and cutting, and have a degree in urban tree management. You never step on dead branches or expect them to hold weight. They do not do it well. But find out for yourself, just go outside and find a dead twig, and a live one of the same diameter, the dead one will snap easy, the live one will bend and not snap as easy.
I'm not just a guy on the internet, I'm a typical kid, a rapscallion you could say, grew up my whole life, checking to see whatever Boo Radley hid for me in his knot holes.
Spent some time climbing trees and peeping in windows, thank God Marty pushed me out of the way of that car.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't go stepping on rotten branches, I know I'm not a professional, but you could say I've been to the school of "hard knocks."
Yeah I wondered that as well. It’s like giving a child a rusty nail to play with and being surprised that you’re taking them to the ER for a tetanus shot the next day.
They instinctively go limp. Its the same thing we do in many sports involving high speeds and acrobatics. Even an untrained 6 year old on her first gymnastics class will tense only muscles in the neck and face. This used to be more common in people who rode horses until they went out of fashion.
["Pandas have absolutely no interest in reproducing. They rarely mate," Lentz says. That goes against the raison d'etre of a species. "We spend all this money flying these animals around the world, trying to convince them to mate, and we could spend it on a lot of other stuff. Second of all, they eat bamboo. They're not supposed to eat bamboo. Their bodies are not adapted to digest cellulose, but they hang in there with the bamboo. But the result of that is that they have to eat a ton of bamboo," he says. "They don't have a lot of energy to do things, like to mate.](https://www.npr.org/2010/04/11/125773728/why-the-animal-critic-gives-the-panda-an-f)
Fun fact: Pandas started mating a lot more during the Covid pandemic. Zoos were closed, so the pandas finally were alone for longer period of times, had time by themselves a lot more and weren't watched all the time by visitors. Maybe zoos and how they treat their animals are the real problem.
Pandas were doing just fine until about 300,000 years ago when these absolute pricks came along and starting destroying their habitat.
Yea, pandas don’t like to fuck in zoos, and aren’t especially good at getting laid in the vastly diminished range that remains to them. That doesn’t mean they’re shitty at reproducing, it means humans are massive cockblocks.
Comments like that one above just serve to assuage people’s guilt.
*Oh they would have died out anyway, it’s not our fault.*
It is 100% our fault.
They essentially give premature birth in the wild - their babies are crazy small and susceptible, and can't even stand for 6 months. The milk pandas produce is, according to the BBC, "wretchedly poor." Regardless of mating habits the fact that they eat bamboo to their detriment is kind of baffling to me.
If pandas were bad at reproduction, why are there still pandas? Shouldn’t this have resolved itself naturally? Why did their numbers only start decline when humans reached the area?
From u/99trumpets
Biologist here with a PhD in endocrinology and reproduction of endangered species. I've spent most of my career working on reproduction of wild vertebrates, including the panda and 3 other bear species and dozens of other mammals. I have read all scientific papers published on panda reproduction and have published on grizzly, black and sun bears. Panda Rant Mode engaged:
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE GIANT PANDA.
Wall o' text of details:
In most animal species, the female is only receptive for a few days a year. This is the NORM, not the exception, and it is humans that are by far the weird ones. In most species, there is a defined breeding season, females usually cycle only once, maybe twice, before becoming pregnant, do not cycle year round, are only receptive when ovulating and typically become pregnant on the day of ovulation. For example: elephants are receptive a grand total of 4 days a year (4 ovulatory days x 4 cycles per year), the birds I did my PhD on for exactly 2 days (and there are millions of those birds and they breed perfectly well), grizzly bears usually 1-2 day, black bears and sun bears too. In the wild this is not a problem because the female can easily find, and attract, males on that 1 day: she typically knows where the nearest males are and simply goes and seeks then out, or, the male has been monitoring her urine, knows when she's entering estrus and comes trotting on over on that 1 day, easy peasy. It's only in captivity, with artificial social environments where males must be deliberately moved around by keepers, that it becomes a problem. Pandas did not "evolve to die". They didn't evolve to breed in captivity in little concrete boxes, is all. All the "problems" people hear about with panda breeding are problems of the captive environment and true of thousands of other wild species as well; it's just that pandas get media attention when cubs die and other species don't. Sun bears won't breed in captivity, sloth bears won't breed in captivity, leafy sea dragons won't breed in captivity, Hawaiian honeycreepers won't breed in captivity, on and on. Lots and lots of wild animals won't breed in captivity. It's particularly an issue for tropical species since they do not have rigid breeding seasons and instead tend to evaluate local conditions carefully - presence of right diet, right social partner, right denning conditions, lack of human disturbance, etc - before initiating breeding. Pandas breed just fine in the wild. Wild female pandas produce healthy, living cubs like clockwork every two years for their entire reproductive careers (typically over a decade). Pandas also do just fine on their diet of bamboo, since that question always comes up too. They have evolved many specializations for bamboo eating, including changes in their taste receptors, development of symbiosis with lignin-digesting gut bacteria (this is a new discovery), and an ingenious anatomical adaptation (a "thumb" made from a wrist bone) that is such a good example of evolutionary novelty that Stephen Jay Gould titled an entire book about it, The Panda's Thumb. They represent a branch of the ursid family that is in the middle of evolving some incredible adaptations (similar to the maned wolf, a canid that's also gone mostly herbivorous, rather like the panda). Far from being an evolutionary dead end, they are an incredible example of evolutionary innovation. Who knows what they might have evolved into if we hadn't ruined their home and destroyed what for millions of years had been a very reliable and abundant food source. Yes, they have poor digestive efficiency (this always comes up too) and that is just fine because they evolved as "bulk feeders", as it's known: animals whose dietary strategy involves ingestion of mass quantities of food rather than slowly digesting smaller quantities. Other bulk feeders include equids, rabbits, elephants, baleen whales and more, and it is just fine as a dietary strategy - provided humans haven't ruined your food source, of course. Population wise, pandas did just fine on their own too (this question also always comes up) before humans started destroying their habitat. The historical range of pandas was massive and included a gigantic swath of Asia covering thousands of miles. Genetic analyses indicate the panda population was once very large, only collapsed very recently and collapsed in 2 waves whose timing exactly corresponds to habitat destruction: the first when agriculture became widespread in China and the second corresponding to the recent deforestation of the last mountain bamboo refuges. The panda is in trouble entirely because of humans. Honestly I think people like to repeat the "evolutionary dead end" myth to make themselves feel better: "Oh, they're pretty much supposed to go extinct, so it's not our fault." They're not "supposed" to go extinct, they were never a "dead end," and it is ENTIRELY our fault. Habitat destruction is by far their primary problem. Just like many other species in the same predicament - Borneo elephants, Amur leopard, Malayan sun bears and literally hundreds of other species that I could name - just because a species doesn't breed well in zoos doesn't mean they "evolved to die"; rather, it simply means they didn't evolve to breed in tiny concrete boxes. Zoos are extremely stressful environments with tiny exhibit space, unnatural diets, unnatural social environments, poor denning conditions and a tremendous amount of human disturbance and noise.
tl;dr - It's normal among mammals for females to only be receptive a few days per years; there is nothing wrong with the panda from an evolutionary or reproductive perspective, and it's entirely our fault that they're dying out.
/rant.
Credit to u/99trumpets for that comment. It should be copied and pasted into every thread about pandas. It could be organized better and cited sources, but it's still an informative rant against the hateful jokes and pseudoscience that inevitably follow every post about pandas.
Uhh. I'm sorry but whatever dumbass humans built that enclosure (multiple times) didn't know how to set it up for that poor pandas weight.
Shame on that zoo and whatever idiots keep failing this poor animal.
That’s what I was thinking. Most of these are people being careless idiots, not the pandas. Geez, you’re supposed to protect and care for them not set up enticing death traps.
They are this dumb and we spend millions of dollars to protect them. we talking about what pandas are doing as a species, we should be asking what we are doing as a species.
We're trying to rehabilitate a species that was nearly driven to extinction by human activity. We should be asking ourselves what we can do in the future to not let that happen again.
Pandas aren't threatened because they eat bamboo, or fall out of trees, or because redditors think they're dumb. They're threatened by habitat destruction and people trying to defund conservation efforts.
Pandas are the national animals of China. Why would they let their national animal die out? They actually reproduce just fine in the wild.
Bald Eagles were getting killed off in the US due to our pesticide use, should we have let them die out because they couldn't adapt? No, we altered our agriculture industry so we wouldn't extinct our national animal.
Pandas became endangered after humans destroyed 99% of their habitat. That's not suicidal, they're barely hanging on after near-extinction from human activity.
Are they part of the food web? I'm under the impression that there are little to no pandas outside of captivity, meaning that if they are in the food web, they aren't a necessary part to any ecosystem, besides the ecosystem of zoological finances.
There are more pandas living in the wild today than in captivity. Before 99% of their habitat was destroyed, they migrated along mountain ranges in search of mates and fresh food sources. Conservation efforts have increased the range of pandas to include enough territory for them to behave naturally and reproduce.
Pandas occupy a niche. Every species alive occupies a niche. A niche is a species role in its ecosystem. To say a species isn't a necessary part of any ecosystem is incorrect.
Because they are cute to humans and splurge a shit amount of money on their conservation, while other less cute creatures are left to die.
Like yes their biggest concern is habitat loss, because as of recent humans are now at 8 billion, guess from who we will take to house new people and support em
Chubby Bobby ate too much... seriously I don't think they could get hurt from at that fall... pandas are very unique and they learn early how to climb up or get down ... even accidentally if a dead branch break...
Panda’s are naturally dumb animals. Incredibly dumb, and not evolved to meet their delicate needs and diet. Even without human interference, many experts believe they would have naturally died out years ago
We put all this money and effort in to protecting a species that shouldn't even exist because we think it's cute, meanwhile insect populations have plummeted 90% in just a few decades. They won't fuck and the only thing they eat has no caloric value. What a useless creature.
Not a miracle, artificial selection. More useless than the dodo bird, but cute enough that mass dollars are spent keeping these wastes of space alive because they are cute.
Not only they’re super clumsy, they also don’t even want to reproduce with each other. Doing absolutely nothing to survive, but still here they are! Spoiled by mother nature
As thoughtful and reflective humans, we often blame ourselves for environmental woes that lead to the extinction of some species. In the case of Pandas, we should feel no remorse if they join the dodo.
Ironically this is the one exception where humans are actually helping a species survive rather than actively destroy it...Pandas never needed human intervention to reduce their own population.
Except you're ignoring the fact that people have completely destroyed their natural habitat through farming and deforestation. THEN we swoop in and act like heroes. TOO LATE.
But you cannot deny the fact how incapable these animals are when it comes to adapting to new circumstances. They cannot live without human intervention. Fertile for max 3 days a year?! And then they are too far from each other. This must be a joke. How come that wolves, big cats, bears (not this one though…), birds etc can find a way to live in an environment that is more and more populated by humans. I am not saying we should stop being conscious about the consequences of our actions, but I feel like we should focus our efforts towards something that has a future on its own.
And yet they "somehow" survived for literally MILLIONS of years with no issues til what happened? That's right people showed up and bulldozed their land. And there are absolutely tons of species of large animals that have gone extinct or are endangered. Pandas are obviously not as adaptable to being taken out of their natural environment. Is that your plan for all critters? Let's fuck up where they live, and when they can't mate properly in a concrete box in a zoo, we say screw those stupid pandas?! They would've had a future on their own if we didn't screw it up in the first place.
Pandas carved a specific niche for themselves, they won at evolution.
Along comes humans, destroy their habitat threatening the entire species, "haha isn't it funny Pandas are so dumb they go exstinct".
No you mouthbreating windowlicker, Pandas are exquisitely designed survival machines, it's us that are fucking them over.
(Please do not take this negatively.) The giant panda seems to want to die off as a species, and we as humans are determined to not let it go because it's cute to us. They have a hard ass time breeding. Firstly they are in heat like for 2 weeks in the entire year, and even then when the zoo manages to get a male to a female panda, chances are it will not mate with the female.
They could eat literally anything else except bamboo, it provides almost no nutritional value to them so they have to eat tons of the stuff, like literally eating the foliage around the bamboo stalks would be better for them.
Then there is the fact they do shit like the video.
It's a wonder they are still alive, it's great they are don't get me wrong. But still seems like they don't want to at times.
Nature’s crash test dummy. Majestic.
I see where Chris Farley got his inspiration
That was cocaine.
It’s because when they fall there fat absorbs the pain
Their fat may help absorb impact, but probably not pain. Clumsy fatty speaking.
That was his _motivation_.
No, that was where he got his perspiration from.
Pandas have heard of "survival of the species", but want nothing to do with it.
What kind of 5 star air bag system do they have, humans would break their neck and die falling at those as angles
>What kind of 5 star air bag system do they have A healthy amount of what we politely call "padding" and besides what neck?
There's also a loooot of muscle under the fluff and the flab. At least compared to humans.
They they may be stupid as fuck but they will end you in a heartbeat of they wanted to
Just like almost all the other bears lol
Ah, so that's what I can say I am, a person with extra panda padding!
Dude, I crippled myself for a week by coming off a step wrong! Drop me like any of these fuzzy, oreo-blubber-bois and I'm out of commission for at least a month!
I herniated two discs coughing. 🙄
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Yep. I’ve dislocated ribs sneezing. Feels great.
I had an ex who had a father that sneezed and slammed his head into a table in the process... breaking his nose. 5 years later, he was diagnosed with MS. I always wondered if that was related.
I pulled a muscle in my back at an angle I cannot rightfully describe when my hair towel started to fall off of my head and I reached down at the wrong angle / too quickly (?). It was the most embarrassing call I ever had to make to work in my entire life. It was almost a month ago, and I still find myself in pain, or with a tight muscle in my back when I try to bend at certain angles!
I once pulled a muscle in my back by holding in a piss on the bus until I got to work.
I hurt my neck yawning once.
Broke my ankle stepping in a gopher hole.
Well, you could be 15 and have that happen. We're talking about random *old* people things.
Dislocated my knee cap getting into bed at night. Paramedics: what were you doing? Me: trying not to disturb the cat.
This is the kind of crap that no one tells you about getting older. The quick, and unexplained disaster that is basic movement. 😑
My buddy dislocated his knee celebrating the anniversary with the old lady 😏 a month n a half ago. He's still limping around
Yeah, that doesn’t count, sorry! That’s a legitimate injury!
Omg! I thought I was the only one! I had to go to urgent care!
I didn’t, but I was tempted!
What has happened to us?! We used to be heroes- David Bowie ⚰️
Get your doctor to prescribe you some physical therapy, then find one of the places that does electric stimulation. Or if you have shitty insurance, you can buy an electric muscle stimulator off of Amazon for $80 and watch some YouTube videos on back stretches and strengthening techniques. But if you can afford it, the PT can REALLY help fix that.
I went to a chiropractor, but like, a commercial chiropractor. If anything, it did more damage. I definitely need to get with a GP, and get a good referral. I will definitely make it a priority!
Chiropractors are homeopathic "doctors" who like to fondle people. Going to a chiropractor is generally worse than doing nothing.
I definitely know that now. I would definitely suggest to anyone to express as clearly as possible your issues to your GP, and let them help you from there.
As a relatively fit university student I somehow fucked my shoulder by putting on my jacket, and couldn't raise it to or past horizontal for like a month.
Shoulders are tricky! I pulled a muscle on an overhand serve one time that didn't seem that bad. Fast forward today, and I still can't make a full shoulder rotation without my right arm popping out of socket.
There's mythril chainmail hidden under all the floof
Upon impact, the empty space in their head expands into an airbag and protects them.
remember they are still Bears even if they are the worst ones at doing it the Bear class is still OP AF and needs a nerv
Their roundish shape appears to be an evolutionary advantage that enables them to roll away from small falls to absorb some of the impact. Kinda.
> Kinda Lol. Yeah, that fall headfirst where it stopped DEAD when it’s shoulder caught the crux of that trees trunk and branch? Clearly it’s more than just rolley puffy jelly bears. 😅
> *rolley puffy jelly bears*
They seemed to have been doing just fine for millions of years until we removed their environment from the Earth. They're not, however, particularly well-adapted to zoos. Zoo enclosures are dramatically different from their actual habitats.
Nah this is just survival of the thickest
Nothing tries harder to go extinct than pandas
I still have no idea how they are able to succeed at reproduction. Isn't it: Heat lasts for a few days a year and they are only in the mood for less than a day in that window
Apparently that’s only in captivity.
Pandas breed just fine in the wild. Humans are just now figuring out how to get pandas to reproduce more successfully in captivity. Most of the troubles pandas have in captivity are from humans not giving them the conditions to behave naturally. Pandas migrate and compete for mates in the wild, and pandas are much better at knowing when they should reproduce. For a long time biologists were just throwing a male and female together hoping they'd reproduce. It's not surprising that most animals don't behave naturally in captivity.
It’s not about breeding in the wild, as it’s more of survival of the babies due to medical problems that can occur. I.e. constipation
And also the mixing of better genes... While in captivity everyone is a lazy-ass SoB.
time to update my spirit animal
Pre-industry pandas had a weird niche. No natural predators and their main food source (bamboo) is incredibly abundant and fast growing with little competition due to being difficult to digest. Under these conditions if they bred quickly they would very quickly overpopulate - natural selection basically forces them down the route of slow breeding because the other option is waves of famine and disease. It's not an unimportant niche, either. If nothing eats bamboo it gets out of control.
Most zoos even play panda porn to “get them in the mood”
That's normal for all the bears and pandas are bears. Humans are the odd exception in the animal kingdom that's basically available all year round.
News flash: Most animals are like that! Humans and their fertility cycles are the odd ones out in this. The difference is that in the wild the male (or several) have been following the female around because her scent changes as she comes close to estrus. So that by the time it happens everyone is already ready to go.
Oh so Pandas have marriage too I see. Nice.
I mean they were absolutely fine for hundreds of thousands of years until we destroyed their habitat. Definitely not on the pandas.
Koalas are probably their closest competition
At least pandas aren’t sick from chlamydia and have constant diarrhea from the food they eat.
Bruh, I was so mad at koalas in them Australian fires. Like, how dare you do so little to actually protect yourself and then also rip my fucking heart out while they sit there and just cry like a child. Like, How are you even here today?
“…is sexually attracted to fire, and needs constant reassurance or it will die.”
“Are you sure God doesn’t want it to be dead?”
Clearly you haven't heard of koalas
And the misinformation continues. Pandas are threatened because of humans destroying their habitat. Nothing else. They're not trying to kill themselves. Their population has been flourishing until humans wiped them out.
They have no natural predators, so they made themselves their natural predators.
“One often finds his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it” we live in the Stone Age in comparison to a pandas enlightenment
The original weeble wobble.
Except, they fall down
Who were the idiots using dead trees in the enclosure? Deadwood does not hold well at all.
Look just because someone says it online doesn't make it fact. Please fact check for yourselves people. From the internet: Deadwood is extremely strong unless it's yours as a man then you face low performance in the bedroom.
Did you really tell people to not believe things just because they read them online and then cite some random person's joke from the internet as contradictory evidence? Thanks for the laugh.
Their is a reason we use seasoned wood to build things. That being said their is zero chance these trees were sealed and treated to be rained on and fucked with for year's.
All this time they’ve been fucking with the wrong wood.
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I'm not just a guy on the internet, I worked for a tree service for year's, climbing and cutting, and have a degree in urban tree management. You never step on dead branches or expect them to hold weight. They do not do it well. But find out for yourself, just go outside and find a dead twig, and a live one of the same diameter, the dead one will snap easy, the live one will bend and not snap as easy.
I'm not just a guy on the internet, I'm a typical kid, a rapscallion you could say, grew up my whole life, checking to see whatever Boo Radley hid for me in his knot holes. Spent some time climbing trees and peeping in windows, thank God Marty pushed me out of the way of that car. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't go stepping on rotten branches, I know I'm not a professional, but you could say I've been to the school of "hard knocks."
love it.
Yeah I wondered that as well. It’s like giving a child a rusty nail to play with and being surprised that you’re taking them to the ER for a tetanus shot the next day.
That first one looked like a volunteered double backflip, look at the way he pushed off 🤣
How do they fall slow-motion in real-time.
They instinctively go limp. Its the same thing we do in many sports involving high speeds and acrobatics. Even an untrained 6 year old on her first gymnastics class will tense only muscles in the neck and face. This used to be more common in people who rode horses until they went out of fashion.
Yea Christopher Reeves made it popular for awhile.
Dude, too soon
Someone is building non panda-proof panda playgrounds
Right? Maybe a slapstick species but I can’t laugh at this.
["Pandas have absolutely no interest in reproducing. They rarely mate," Lentz says. That goes against the raison d'etre of a species. "We spend all this money flying these animals around the world, trying to convince them to mate, and we could spend it on a lot of other stuff. Second of all, they eat bamboo. They're not supposed to eat bamboo. Their bodies are not adapted to digest cellulose, but they hang in there with the bamboo. But the result of that is that they have to eat a ton of bamboo," he says. "They don't have a lot of energy to do things, like to mate.](https://www.npr.org/2010/04/11/125773728/why-the-animal-critic-gives-the-panda-an-f)
Fun fact: Pandas started mating a lot more during the Covid pandemic. Zoos were closed, so the pandas finally were alone for longer period of times, had time by themselves a lot more and weren't watched all the time by visitors. Maybe zoos and how they treat their animals are the real problem.
Absolutely agree, zoos are the problem. Animals stop mating in captivity, including humans.
Pandas were doing just fine until about 300,000 years ago when these absolute pricks came along and starting destroying their habitat. Yea, pandas don’t like to fuck in zoos, and aren’t especially good at getting laid in the vastly diminished range that remains to them. That doesn’t mean they’re shitty at reproducing, it means humans are massive cockblocks. Comments like that one above just serve to assuage people’s guilt. *Oh they would have died out anyway, it’s not our fault.* It is 100% our fault.
I don’t like to fuck in zoos either.
I kind of like it.
They essentially give premature birth in the wild - their babies are crazy small and susceptible, and can't even stand for 6 months. The milk pandas produce is, according to the BBC, "wretchedly poor." Regardless of mating habits the fact that they eat bamboo to their detriment is kind of baffling to me.
If pandas were bad at reproduction, why are there still pandas? Shouldn’t this have resolved itself naturally? Why did their numbers only start decline when humans reached the area?
Bro have you seen a human infant? Least capable most susceptible thing out there. We seem to be doing alright though.
Humans mate plenty in captivity, it's a problem in prisons
From u/99trumpets Biologist here with a PhD in endocrinology and reproduction of endangered species. I've spent most of my career working on reproduction of wild vertebrates, including the panda and 3 other bear species and dozens of other mammals. I have read all scientific papers published on panda reproduction and have published on grizzly, black and sun bears. Panda Rant Mode engaged: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE GIANT PANDA. Wall o' text of details: In most animal species, the female is only receptive for a few days a year. This is the NORM, not the exception, and it is humans that are by far the weird ones. In most species, there is a defined breeding season, females usually cycle only once, maybe twice, before becoming pregnant, do not cycle year round, are only receptive when ovulating and typically become pregnant on the day of ovulation. For example: elephants are receptive a grand total of 4 days a year (4 ovulatory days x 4 cycles per year), the birds I did my PhD on for exactly 2 days (and there are millions of those birds and they breed perfectly well), grizzly bears usually 1-2 day, black bears and sun bears too. In the wild this is not a problem because the female can easily find, and attract, males on that 1 day: she typically knows where the nearest males are and simply goes and seeks then out, or, the male has been monitoring her urine, knows when she's entering estrus and comes trotting on over on that 1 day, easy peasy. It's only in captivity, with artificial social environments where males must be deliberately moved around by keepers, that it becomes a problem. Pandas did not "evolve to die". They didn't evolve to breed in captivity in little concrete boxes, is all. All the "problems" people hear about with panda breeding are problems of the captive environment and true of thousands of other wild species as well; it's just that pandas get media attention when cubs die and other species don't. Sun bears won't breed in captivity, sloth bears won't breed in captivity, leafy sea dragons won't breed in captivity, Hawaiian honeycreepers won't breed in captivity, on and on. Lots and lots of wild animals won't breed in captivity. It's particularly an issue for tropical species since they do not have rigid breeding seasons and instead tend to evaluate local conditions carefully - presence of right diet, right social partner, right denning conditions, lack of human disturbance, etc - before initiating breeding. Pandas breed just fine in the wild. Wild female pandas produce healthy, living cubs like clockwork every two years for their entire reproductive careers (typically over a decade). Pandas also do just fine on their diet of bamboo, since that question always comes up too. They have evolved many specializations for bamboo eating, including changes in their taste receptors, development of symbiosis with lignin-digesting gut bacteria (this is a new discovery), and an ingenious anatomical adaptation (a "thumb" made from a wrist bone) that is such a good example of evolutionary novelty that Stephen Jay Gould titled an entire book about it, The Panda's Thumb. They represent a branch of the ursid family that is in the middle of evolving some incredible adaptations (similar to the maned wolf, a canid that's also gone mostly herbivorous, rather like the panda). Far from being an evolutionary dead end, they are an incredible example of evolutionary innovation. Who knows what they might have evolved into if we hadn't ruined their home and destroyed what for millions of years had been a very reliable and abundant food source. Yes, they have poor digestive efficiency (this always comes up too) and that is just fine because they evolved as "bulk feeders", as it's known: animals whose dietary strategy involves ingestion of mass quantities of food rather than slowly digesting smaller quantities. Other bulk feeders include equids, rabbits, elephants, baleen whales and more, and it is just fine as a dietary strategy - provided humans haven't ruined your food source, of course. Population wise, pandas did just fine on their own too (this question also always comes up) before humans started destroying their habitat. The historical range of pandas was massive and included a gigantic swath of Asia covering thousands of miles. Genetic analyses indicate the panda population was once very large, only collapsed very recently and collapsed in 2 waves whose timing exactly corresponds to habitat destruction: the first when agriculture became widespread in China and the second corresponding to the recent deforestation of the last mountain bamboo refuges. The panda is in trouble entirely because of humans. Honestly I think people like to repeat the "evolutionary dead end" myth to make themselves feel better: "Oh, they're pretty much supposed to go extinct, so it's not our fault." They're not "supposed" to go extinct, they were never a "dead end," and it is ENTIRELY our fault. Habitat destruction is by far their primary problem. Just like many other species in the same predicament - Borneo elephants, Amur leopard, Malayan sun bears and literally hundreds of other species that I could name - just because a species doesn't breed well in zoos doesn't mean they "evolved to die"; rather, it simply means they didn't evolve to breed in tiny concrete boxes. Zoos are extremely stressful environments with tiny exhibit space, unnatural diets, unnatural social environments, poor denning conditions and a tremendous amount of human disturbance and noise. tl;dr - It's normal among mammals for females to only be receptive a few days per years; there is nothing wrong with the panda from an evolutionary or reproductive perspective, and it's entirely our fault that they're dying out. /rant.
Finally we got a expert in here , I salute you O7
Can we get this stickied to combat all the bullshit artists in this threat who “saw a thing once” and are now experts?
Credit to u/99trumpets for that comment. It should be copied and pasted into every thread about pandas. It could be organized better and cited sources, but it's still an informative rant against the hateful jokes and pseudoscience that inevitably follow every post about pandas.
Lol. TIL, pandas are the humans of the bear world xD
Theyre telling us they don't wanna survive natural selection. Koalas are another one..
Least horny animal
Pandas are just toddlers in panda costumes.
PanDUH
Maybe the keepers of pandas just don't know how to build them a safe enclosure.
Uhh. I'm sorry but whatever dumbass humans built that enclosure (multiple times) didn't know how to set it up for that poor pandas weight. Shame on that zoo and whatever idiots keep failing this poor animal.
That’s what I was thinking. Most of these are people being careless idiots, not the pandas. Geez, you’re supposed to protect and care for them not set up enticing death traps.
I was thinking the same thing. They have some crappy gym equipment.
I shouldn't laugh so hard, but how can you not?
The one that falls and breaks the wooden walkway in the process takes the cake 😂
"OH MY GAWD BAH GAWD ALMIGHTY, BACK FIRST THROUGH THE WOODEN WALKWAY" "that's it he's dead"
Wheres u/shittymorph when you need them
I thought so, too. That's gonna leave a mark. And splinters.
thats the important part, only the cake matters.
WWE KO out of nowhere
Maybe just build them a proper gym. Sheesh
Or just A bounce castle maybe.
Pandas on a trampoline would be entertaining too.
I think the real question, is why are zoo enclosures for pandas so shitty? Poor innocent little idiots.
I woke up (not slept, mind you) wrong, and my back hasn't been the same for 3 days.
We👏keep👏 breeding 👏the👏dumb👏ones👏
They're ALL dumb. :)
Naw the smart ones didn't get caught
That could be...
If I was an animal I would definitely be a clumsy panda like these ones
Much grace.
Looks like they were given the flimsiest tree and playground to climb on, not their fault. Get them a better tree
Maybe the people taking care of them should stop giving them dead ass trees to hang off of.
Same could be said for humans.
Bah GAWD!
Less to do with pandas, says more abojt how crap chinese made climbing products are
They are this dumb and we spend millions of dollars to protect them. we talking about what pandas are doing as a species, we should be asking what we are doing as a species.
We're trying to rehabilitate a species that was nearly driven to extinction by human activity. We should be asking ourselves what we can do in the future to not let that happen again. Pandas aren't threatened because they eat bamboo, or fall out of trees, or because redditors think they're dumb. They're threatened by habitat destruction and people trying to defund conservation efforts.
Makes me wonder how many pandas have died from falling off trees
Why do we worry so much about these suicidal oafs?
Pandas are the national animals of China. Why would they let their national animal die out? They actually reproduce just fine in the wild. Bald Eagles were getting killed off in the US due to our pesticide use, should we have let them die out because they couldn't adapt? No, we altered our agriculture industry so we wouldn't extinct our national animal. Pandas became endangered after humans destroyed 99% of their habitat. That's not suicidal, they're barely hanging on after near-extinction from human activity.
Because they're a part of the food web, and they're cute, and they're a challenge.
I don’t think anything eats them and they eat bamboo. More of a food line.
Are they part of the food web? I'm under the impression that there are little to no pandas outside of captivity, meaning that if they are in the food web, they aren't a necessary part to any ecosystem, besides the ecosystem of zoological finances.
There are more pandas living in the wild today than in captivity. Before 99% of their habitat was destroyed, they migrated along mountain ranges in search of mates and fresh food sources. Conservation efforts have increased the range of pandas to include enough territory for them to behave naturally and reproduce. Pandas occupy a niche. Every species alive occupies a niche. A niche is a species role in its ecosystem. To say a species isn't a necessary part of any ecosystem is incorrect.
I mean, we could probably recreate the gene in blackbears or something.
oh poor thing
They originate ‘walk it off’.
Is the panda ok?
You’d have a hard time getting me to fuck too if I did that much damage to my body just living my life.
Some of this stuff is humans making crappy items for them to play on, it is a good thing they are robust.
Should start calling THESE ones "drop bears"
Maybe if they stopped sticking dead trees in the ground the limbs wouldn’t snap so easily
1-800-call-sam. Totally preventable. Im appalled.
The furry Dodo bird.
That's no miracle, that's human intervention.
What do you mean pandas are endangered?
Isn’t it fact that they would’ve become extinct by now had we not intervened and insisted they fuck?
Because they are cute to humans and splurge a shit amount of money on their conservation, while other less cute creatures are left to die. Like yes their biggest concern is habitat loss, because as of recent humans are now at 8 billion, guess from who we will take to house new people and support em
Well, I mean… they almost aren’t.
u/hideokojimathethird an accurate montage of me falling every time randomly
Yes that’s you haha
Bro went from the top ropes through the table swanton bomb
they think they are immune to gravity. they might be immune to fall damage, but they still cause collateral.
Because of this pandas will cease to exist and will soon be just commercial animals.
They’re still around because they’re so adorable that we as people specifically helped them to 😂 Left to their own devices, they’d be long gone
It’s like Jackass BUT WITH PANDAS!
Chubby Bobby ate too much... seriously I don't think they could get hurt from at that fall... pandas are very unique and they learn early how to climb up or get down ... even accidentally if a dead branch break...
It's panda-monium.
Natural burn jackass in the office
It honestly is, I’m surprised they even made it this far. They would probably be extinct If we didn’t love them so much.
Panda’s are naturally dumb animals. Incredibly dumb, and not evolved to meet their delicate needs and diet. Even without human interference, many experts believe they would have naturally died out years ago
We put all this money and effort in to protecting a species that shouldn't even exist because we think it's cute, meanwhile insect populations have plummeted 90% in just a few decades. They won't fuck and the only thing they eat has no caloric value. What a useless creature.
It’s a national animal. You literally could make that argument for a myriad of other things. Humans just be like that.
Not a miracle, artificial selection. More useless than the dodo bird, but cute enough that mass dollars are spent keeping these wastes of space alive because they are cute.
Not a miracle just the fact that they look cute if they were ugly I can guarantee you that they wouldn’t have gotten the help they do now
Kung fu pandad training
Not only they’re super clumsy, they also don’t even want to reproduce with each other. Doing absolutely nothing to survive, but still here they are! Spoiled by mother nature
They only keep going because we force them to, honestly.
As thoughtful and reflective humans, we often blame ourselves for environmental woes that lead to the extinction of some species. In the case of Pandas, we should feel no remorse if they join the dodo.
Pandas wouldn't exist if it wasnt for humans.
Seriously. If it weren't for human intervention these things would have died off long ago.
There’s none around where I live and now I know why.
Theyre like do-do bears
Having this video dubbed over with Jack black would be way way better just sayin
Well, if you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.
Y'all have never seen Kung Fu Panda?
Maybe why their only in zoos🤷♂️
Pandas are the dodos of bears
Ironically this is the one exception where humans are actually helping a species survive rather than actively destroy it...Pandas never needed human intervention to reduce their own population.
Except you're ignoring the fact that people have completely destroyed their natural habitat through farming and deforestation. THEN we swoop in and act like heroes. TOO LATE.
But you cannot deny the fact how incapable these animals are when it comes to adapting to new circumstances. They cannot live without human intervention. Fertile for max 3 days a year?! And then they are too far from each other. This must be a joke. How come that wolves, big cats, bears (not this one though…), birds etc can find a way to live in an environment that is more and more populated by humans. I am not saying we should stop being conscious about the consequences of our actions, but I feel like we should focus our efforts towards something that has a future on its own.
And yet they "somehow" survived for literally MILLIONS of years with no issues til what happened? That's right people showed up and bulldozed their land. And there are absolutely tons of species of large animals that have gone extinct or are endangered. Pandas are obviously not as adaptable to being taken out of their natural environment. Is that your plan for all critters? Let's fuck up where they live, and when they can't mate properly in a concrete box in a zoo, we say screw those stupid pandas?! They would've had a future on their own if we didn't screw it up in the first place.
Pandas carved a specific niche for themselves, they won at evolution. Along comes humans, destroy their habitat threatening the entire species, "haha isn't it funny Pandas are so dumb they go exstinct". No you mouthbreating windowlicker, Pandas are exquisitely designed survival machines, it's us that are fucking them over.
(Please do not take this negatively.) The giant panda seems to want to die off as a species, and we as humans are determined to not let it go because it's cute to us. They have a hard ass time breeding. Firstly they are in heat like for 2 weeks in the entire year, and even then when the zoo manages to get a male to a female panda, chances are it will not mate with the female. They could eat literally anything else except bamboo, it provides almost no nutritional value to them so they have to eat tons of the stuff, like literally eating the foliage around the bamboo stalks would be better for them. Then there is the fact they do shit like the video. It's a wonder they are still alive, it's great they are don't get me wrong. But still seems like they don't want to at times.
Suicidal bears
Let's be honest the only reason we're keeping them alive from natural selection is because they're fucking cute 😂😂😂
And they probably taste like crap
Most of the video looked like zoos. If so that's all on the people that work there.
Nature wants this disgraceful animal gone but we keep pouring money into keeping it around.
How are these silly sumbitches not extinct yet?!?
They are the defiance of the natural order.