Unlike pandas koalas are very well equipped to digest their diet of eucalypt leaves. They are also very good at living in trees and reproduce quite well. I'm not sure there is any truth in the idea that they're dumb. Marsupials generally aren't the sharpest tools in the shed but without environmental destruction by humans they are good survivors.
@@rais1953 If I remember correctly, the idea of Koalas being dumb/ the dumbest animal on Earth comes from the size of their brain, specifically the Brain to Body Size Ratio
@@tuffstarr1026 "pandas deserve to go extinct" has become a popular edge lord thing to say and apparently this channel is trying to capitalise on that. Of course seeing evolution through a moralising lens is the opposite of Real Science[tm].
And their current situation caused by modern civilization disturbing their (long) established ecosystem. Panda not really failed evolution, we humans are the one who fail them
Yup! If the goal of evolution is to exist, every organism alive right now is winning! For Pandas being cute and docile was the evolutionary advantage that made humans want to protect them and care for them.
@@alicethemadrabbit1842 Pandas are not specifically docile, they WILL kill a human and they have. There are keepers without a limb due to a panda and no keeper will go in with an adult - especially a male - without back-up.
Except it was, and I'm tired to pretend that its not just because cultural osmosis (or brainrot) looking at excuses to remove the blame for the endargement of nature due to our actions.
sometimes species with basically no competition evolve this super difficult way of mating to keep them from exhausting their food source. if pandas bred like normal maybe in the past they would regularly eradicate their entire area of bamboo and then a whole population starved. maybe the ones that were less effective at breeding managed to just have the right amount of pandas the forest can sustain.
Evolution is a purely reactive process, it evolves animals based on the current environmental pressures not future ones. Specialization is always an evolutionary trap but it keeps happening over and over again organisms want their survival to be as easy as possible so evolving into a food niche that no one else wants always makes sense at the time.
@@TJSaw They generate billions of revenue. In China, there are Panda celebrities that can boost and entire province tourism, Do you think panda is going extinct with these revenue for humans? Is that not a success in evolution?
@@OsirisLord Yes this. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video, because the pattern of generalist -> specialist -> extinct is a common one in evolutionary history. Heck it could be considered a key part of natural selection at the species level.
I think you're being unfair to pandas' evolutionary traits. They're large so other predators don't mess with them. But because of their large size they need to eat a lot of food. And there is not much to eat in a bamboo forest. So evolving to eat poisonous bamboo is amazing. And there low birthrate makes sense if there were hundreds of thousands of them. A low birthrate stablizes population and prevents them from starving.
Not really. Pandas have no natural predators because they live in an area without large predators. A tiger would have no problem taking down a panda if it ever encountered one.
@@adriani9432a panda's bite force is still pretty strong although the tiger could definitely kill a panda it's not worth the effort let alone risk a serious injury from a bite or claw swipe (not sure if pandas can do this one with any competency ) and who knows if panda meat is even a meal option for tigers as they wouldn't start a fight for no reward unless it's to defend their territory and in such situations the tiger is better off just scaring the panda away than starting a death match with it so i think even if tigers were to be present in the wild with pandas it wouldn't change much for the pandas anyways
I agree, they panda consume more protein than the average black/brown bear which makes up about 20% of the diet while panda can have more the 50% of there diet made up of protein, which is more along with wolves and domestic cats which are carnivores where bears are omnivores. Pandas also need less territory which is about 4 to 6 square km while a female North America black bear has a home range of 6.5 to 26 square kilometers As for predation risk, the oldest possible fossil evidence of a panda from a fossilized pseudo thumb dates them back to about 6 Mya, tiger evolved about 3 Mya. Keep in mind that tigers have a hard time dealing with sloth bear’s head to head dispite the fact that the Bengal tiger is larger than the south china tiger but pandas are around the same size as sloth bears. Pandas also have all of their teeth unlike sloth bears which are missing their top two front teeth (incisors), which enables them to suck up termites and other insects with ease. Due to their diet of insects and fruit, their premolars and molars are smaller than those of other bears. Pandas also have an insane bite force of 1,300 to 1,500 psi which is closer to polar bear(1,200 psi) in power than a black bear of similar size of 800 psi. In fact pound for pound a panda can generate more force with its jaws than a tiger of the same weight. There low reproduction rates also show that they aren’t pray upon that often other wise they would have been extinct by the time tigers evolved. Only a large male south china tiger would have the size to take one on and why would you when Muntjac & sambar deer would be better options. A female south china tiger, leopard, and wolves would never think about attacking a adult panda unless in dire circumstances.
Isn't bamboo one of the fastest growing plants in the world, like you can actually see them growing overnight? In a way they should be able to keep the bamboo population in check with how much they eat. Unfortunately, they seem to not want to exist and go extinct. If it wasn't for human intervention, they probably would have gone extinct.
Oh yeah. They existed for millions of years, now we judge and make fun of them because they are having a hard time living in a world we butchered. Seems fair.
Evolution is indeed random and does not happen for a purpose. However, the process of evolution takes shape the way it does primarily through environmental constraints. When she says it happens "for a reason," what she means is "there must have been some sort of constraints such that every other version of the panda died out, and this is the only one that survived." Which I'm sure she might have said if she was trying to be as lingually precise as possible, but that's largely unnecessary because of a little skill called "extrapolation." Most humans are capable of figuring out what she means by "for a reason" without needing clarification, and so do not need such a degree of precision in language.
Murder sounds cooler than embarrassment, tho. Not as something to experience, but being a murder of crows is less embarrassing than being an embarrassment of pandas.
Yeah the like to watch ratio versus sub ratio is dropping in most of the videos. This lady keeps making these comments I’m sure the channel will only be relevant for another year at most
Imagine being so bad at existing that the most intelligent animal in the entirety of existence, will take care of you and do everything it takes to make sure your species and you doesn't die. Seems to me they got things figured out
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
I disagree that "pandas are victims of their own evolutionary choices." Pandas are a function of evolutionary pressures. They never had any say or choice or agency regarding the matter of their evolution. A niche developed and they evolved to fill it. Evolution is nothing if not simultaneously both opportunistic and lazy. Pandas were always "good enough" to take advantage of bamboo as it grows and probably flourish during mast years (and likely eat chicks and eggs if abundant enough; our chickens come from the same area as pandas, and their fertility is based on the presence of food and potential mates, which explodes when entire bamboo forests flower, go to seed and die, called "mast years"). Try feeding female pandas lots of raw eggs and chicks, see if that doesn't trigger higher fertility.
The way pandas eat is unlike those of herbivorous mammals, they are very similar to the route taken by caterpillars. Pandas and caterpillars are basically juicing machines. They ignore the rough, tough to digest fibres altogether, break up plant materials using their exceptionally strong mandibles, and squeeze out the protein and fats for maximum efficiency. This is the best way to tackle tough, often toxic plant materials. In contrast, many ungulates like horses and cows are often very sensitive to toxins and die easily on small doses.
Same, I don’t get why people act like you can’t believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. Seems like a closed minded way of thinking to think you gotta believe in one or the other
@Da_Juice I've always believed God is capable of evolution. If a person believed that he was capable of all things, he is capable of evolution. The Bible was written at a time no one had an understanding of the world around them, it doesn't make it wrong. The Bible doesn't say God created gravity or the atomic theory, regardless. The Bible says he created all things, so that would include the forces that government the universe as well. Science is a means of understanding those forces. Genesis states 7 days to create...but that was before time existed, so 7 days may be 4 billion of our years, not God's. Or it was just what was understood by the writers of the old testament.
it makes me extremely curious- if we turned on the ability to taste and enjoy meat in a panda's DNA, would it eat meat? would it behave different at all? I agree that pandas are pretty poorly "designed" but I love seeing what evolution can do. we're basically observing the early early stages of the birth of a new herbivore like, that's fascinating
Nothing evolves with a purpose just in a direction… pandas happened to evolve in z direction we think is cute good for them… rats happened to evolve in a direction that made them great at hiding in sewers and eating scraps so good for them… the effect can further strengthen the direction through forced natural selection where those that get better at eating our scraps survive better and there for continue the story further like a sort of survivors bias. Although as cuteness is objective and it doesn’t really do anything to help them survive on the wild I doubt it would be accurate to say the direction they evolved in was beneficial due to their cutness.
@@dreammaker9642 it dit help in them effectively being used as the sole symbol of environment protection. As they are used as the brand symbol by WWF representing there goal in protecting nature in general.
@ I mean great but it’s not like they getting royalties for it. What I mean is for the species as a whole it does fokol for them cause they still losing habitat and going extinct. Now for those in captivity it keeps the species going in a way but in captivity which defeats the purpose.
No, they are not. They are from family Procyonidae, while bears and panda are from family Ursidae. You can see it on the phylogenic tree shown in he video. They do share a common ancestor however.
@@so-ares, that's because they are closely related to the red panda, which is the "true", and the first to be discovered and classified, Panda. Red pandas are not bears, like raccoons are not, they are from the family "Mustelidae" and bears from "Ursidae", and they are all in the order "Carnivora" along with the Felidae and Canidae families. Raccoons are trash pandas because of red pandas and not giant pandas.
Let the Pandas go exciting already! Free them into the bamboo forests and if they survive they survive. They don't even seem to be important for their own ecosystem.
One of my favourite facts about panda stupidity is you can trick them into raising more than one cub at a time, simply by swapping the cubs out when the panda isn't looking.
Pandas may have found the most inefficient way to avoid extinction but they DID find a way to get everyone else on board with saving them: Being super cute 🥰
I have read that the panda’s pseudo-thumb is actually an ancestral trait of arctoidea. The spectacled bear sometimes have a pseudo-thumb despite being short faced bears that are more closely related to typical ursine bears than to pandas.
That's what make both the spectacled bear and panda astonishing is that they are both the last surviving members of each of their own subfamily of bears the short faced bears and the running bear which includes the largest known bears and the only bears in Africa.
Creationists who think the world was created as is; are a true miracle. That this level of stupidity among families among so much information somehow didn't get weeded out millennia ago.
Eh. They seem to do well enough. They've been alive for millions of years and would be doing fine if people didn't fuck with their habitat. Leave it to people to blame the animal for being unable to adapt to a world that people change to suit their own needs.
I don't know who has been dunked on more at this point by @Real Science, the sunfish, or the panda... But the panda being related to such powerfull creatures such as bears, I think deserves it more. She did my boy sunfish wrong a lot, poor guy, I laughed so hard at that intro too tho 😂
Pandas are a reminder that evolution does not "think". Evolution is a random process. Countless extinct animals show how often the plan doesn't work. You begin to understand how lucky the living are.
I think as much as they adapted to bamboo, they also adapted to eating insects that live within the bamboo which would probably provide a lot of calories for them.
Pandas: Live peacefully, eat, sleep and roll for fun. Humans: Oh, a mistake of evolution Humans: Kill and torture each other, believe in gods and spirits, cause the sixth mass extinction. Also humans: How are we so intelligent
You are simply amazing. Great videos great charm. The way you tell the story and the perfect tone sometimes serious and sometimes playful delivers a brilliant experience to us!!!
What I understand is that there is a reason why pandas evolved as such. Evolution works on really long time periods, so for all those years without disturbance, pandas peacefully had the big bamboo forests to themselves, and could reproduce slowly to ensure there is not too many pandas in one forest (as another commenter pointed out). However, this was contingent on things staying relatively constant or only gradually changing as per evolutionary time scales. Just as with any other endangered or extinct animal, its really humans who brought such a fast change that pandas got the short end of the (bamboo) stick.
Pandas should be labeled anthropocene dependents alongside domestic cattle. Essentially they survive because humanity conciously allows it. If we even forget that they exist, never mind actually killing them on purpose, they'd go extinct in short order.
Except that they were thriving throughout vast swathes of Asia before Homo Sapiens even existed there. They are endangered because of humans destroying their habitat, nothing else.
If I offered you the ability to spend all day lazing around and eating free food that grew everywhere around you , don't tell me you wouldn't be tempted.
Perspective is a wonderful thing. It could easily be said that adapting to a food source that is so full of cyanide that no other animal will touch it is a great move. Not over breeding also keeps their food source plentiful. The mistake here is not anything to do with evolution, it is ascribing purpose or motive to the process. Whether or not that is intentional, it is almost always where the description goes. Right from the question in the thumbnail it is here. Evolution can't make a "mistake" It has no end goal. It has no aim.
The Red Panda is the true and first Panda, this is the Giant Panda, or false Panda. "The giant panda was initially considered the "true" panda because of its prominence and size. However, the red panda was actually described and named scientifically before the giant panda, receiving the name panda in 1825. The term “panda” is derived from the Nepali word ponya, meaning bamboo or plant-eating animal." So the giant panda only is known by the name "Panda" due to its popularity, not by taxonomy. The true "Panda" is the red one.
Thank you for calling out the evolution deniers. It drives me crazy how someone can say it doesn't exist with the amount of evidence we have that it does.
Pandas 🐼 make sense when you remember virtually all herbivores cannot grasp bamboo 🎍, as they don't have hands of the right size, so suck at eating it. So they have no competition. And no competition makes even a terrible lifestyle viable.
9:51 why are cats shown to be herbivores in that graph? I get if cats are able to process cyanide in low doses maybe, but they are obligate carnivores. Just sayin.
They are not shown to be herbivores but rather its showing what levels of this enzyme carnivores have as comparison. It isn't much at all. And pandas only have a little more than a true carnivore
Fascinating video about the Panda! However, one glaring mistake is that Bears are not true hibernators. They undergo states of torpor during the winter months. The very best hibernators on the planet are Bats! 👍👍🦇🦇
Thanks for another great video! So harsh when it's laid out all together 😅. I really like the fact that you're more in front of the camera too 👍 it conveys another level to the information 🙂
This is an episode that deserves the "insane" moniker and yet you didn't use it in the title? For shame lol. These animals are insanely lucky to still be walking this Earth!!
Once, while deep in a Graham Hancock-esque rabbit hole on youtube, i came across the theory of pandas being the remnants of a domesticated animal from an very old civilization of humans that has since disappeared. All that was left of those humans was this pet that had been domesticated and genetically altered so much that it couldn't live without human care. In my thc induced state of mind it all made so much sense
Murphy’s law dictates if something can be done incorrectly then somewhere somehow someone will mess it up… Pandas are kind of evidence Murphy’s law applies to evolution… Pandas are essentially bearing wrong cause someone had to do it
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
Let's see...microbiome is known to be eleventy trillion % essential to healthy living. Horses eat and process an equal amount of grass per day. We're still wondering why pandas are attracted to horse poop? Wouldn't even a slightly more effective microbiome be a pretty big benefit to a creature that only eats one of the least nutrient available plants on earth?
@dnservice ...because of pandas' well know habit of constant hand washing, right? Yeah...I forgot. /s Yeah...no, your microbiome isn't exclusively populated via things you actually consume. Bacteria transfer can be more incidental. Excellent attempt at thinking, though. You're not all the way there, and I'd have gone with predator evasion from the scent or something if I were looking to seem certain while being completely uninformed...but you do you.
Having kept horses for many years, seen a lot of horse shit, I can say that HS is mainly undigested fibre. By rolling in the HS, pandas are adding an extra layer of insulation over their fur. As the video shows, scientists think this enables them to withstand the cold for longer. This behaviour gives them an advantage during extremes of cold. The argument that they also pick up beneficial herbivore bacteria is without merit as pandas already have adapted to a vegetarian diet, and there is no evidence that equine bacteria would survive and function in what is largely a carnivore gut. The simplest explanation is often the correct one. PS. My dogs love to roll in horse poo. No evolutionary explanation for it.
@majorbruster5916 Doesn't seem to jive with the easily googleable Nature article on this very subject. "Insulation" is actual warmth retention. The Chinese researchers hypothesis was that a chemical compound in the poop made them "feel" warmer, but other researchers don't buy that reasoning completely. Also, dogs roll in poop to mask their scent. It's pretty well accepted that this is a vestigial evolutionary adaptation handed down from wolves, who do the exact same thing in order to mask their scent from prey. Congrats on the horse poop. You seem to have evolved to produce it yourself.
I know this channel does this to appeal to a wider and younger audience, and normally i'm all for that, but the constant flaming of Panda's in this video was just too much for me. It's not funny to call them stupid all the time and actually makes it harder for me to recommend these otherwise amazing videos to my friends and family
Wild how humans came around to destroy the ecosystem and then blame the animals for struggling lmao. Also wild that we didn't acknowledge how the meat eating panda ancestors all kicked the bucket but the bamboo eaters are still around lol
Can't tell if you're serious or just ignorant - no pandas "kicked the bucket" from eating meat, they EVOLVED to stop eating meat and now eat bamboo. This happened milions of years ago over likely hundreds of thousands of years or more. It's not like one day they woke up and decided, it happens INCREDIBLY slowly and gradually. Think about this - if you took a picture of a baby every single day from birth to say 20 years old could you pick out the exact picture where they are now an infant? A toddler? A child? Young adult? NO - as it's so incredibly gradual the day-to-day difference isn't there, you have to take it over months/years - or in this case MILLIONS of years.
I do wonder with how pandas are could they technically still consume meat? Like even just eating insects that also live in the same general area. Like ants or thermites. it would still leave them a round the bamboo but have just a bit more resources available. Let alone even just higher level of meat based sources.
@@realscience Panda 🐼 was created by God so that us people can appreciate the cuteness and sillyness in those fur balls. Similar to how he created cute cats for our fun.
@@realscienceThis is why I've been asking for years for social media apps to block continents geographically. Imagine how beautiful and useful the internet would be if we didn't have to endure Americans on it.
An animal that requires human intervention to prevent extinction. It’s the perfect mascot for for the world wildlife fund. Spend millions to keep this stupid animal alive, because it wants to kill itself.
They had been doing perfectly fine before humans developed agriculture which took a lot of lands. the fact that their habitat is located in the most populated province in all of China didn't help either. If I remember correctly, there used to be tigers living in that region too. But they died out due to human community expansion and lost of habitat, while the Giant Pandas survived.
Pandas and Koalas are pretty amazing in picking a sustenance niche that makes basically no sense
Not sure which is worse. I’ve heard koalas are literally the dumbest animals on earth but at least they can survive on their own.
@Kunfucious577 they won't recognize their food if it isn't attached to the tree anymore but at least they're making babies
Unlike pandas koalas are very well equipped to digest their diet of eucalypt leaves. They are also very good at living in trees and reproduce quite well. I'm not sure there is any truth in the idea that they're dumb. Marsupials generally aren't the sharpest tools in the shed but without environmental destruction by humans they are good survivors.
If a food source is plentiful something is going to take advantage of it.
@@rais1953 If I remember correctly, the idea of Koalas being dumb/ the dumbest animal on Earth comes from the size of their brain, specifically the Brain to Body Size Ratio
the fact that panda survived 6-7 million years on bamboo is already impressive.
Ikr?
Exactly. So what's her point?
Because no predators and competition with other species of herbivores
@@tuffstarr1026 "pandas deserve to go extinct" has become a popular edge lord thing to say and apparently this channel is trying to capitalise on that. Of course seeing evolution through a moralising lens is the opposite of Real Science[tm].
And to think that in our lifetime we might be witnessing evolution run it's course for Pandas is hard to grasp
Stephanie: "It really looks like pandas are just simply bad at surviving."
Pandas: "Which part of '6 million years' didn't you understand"? 🙂
And their current situation caused by modern civilization disturbing their (long) established ecosystem. Panda not really failed evolution, we humans are the one who fail them
It's always human fault if looked closely. Destroyed whole ecosystem. Yet humans just blames everything else except itself.
Yup! If the goal of evolution is to exist, every organism alive right now is winning!
For Pandas being cute and docile was the evolutionary advantage that made humans want to protect them and care for them.
@@alicethemadrabbit1842 Pandas are not specifically docile, they WILL kill a human and they have. There are keepers without a limb due to a panda and no keeper will go in with an adult - especially a male - without back-up.
@@MayYourGodGoWithYou ooooh i did not know that. I will have for sure lost a limb trying to pet one. 😬
Panda does something stupid.
Researchers: Brilliant evolutionary gambit!
just wanted to let you know this comment made me laugh harder than I intended to. Got me cackling.
Thats a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays for them.
Except it was, and I'm tired to pretend that its not just because cultural osmosis (or brainrot) looking at excuses to remove the blame for the endargement of nature due to our actions.
My channel also makes videos about animals.☺🥰
Like some humans, Pandas chose to go against evolution and become vegans to be kind to animals and are slowly going extinct 😆
"We covered mice in poo and they didn't cuddle as much" Yeah I wouldn't want cuddle if I was covered in poo either.
Underrated insight 😂
sometimes species with basically no competition evolve this super difficult way of mating to keep them from exhausting their food source. if pandas bred like normal maybe in the past they would regularly eradicate their entire area of bamboo and then a whole population starved. maybe the ones that were less effective at breeding managed to just have the right amount of pandas the forest can sustain.
That actually makes sense, nature is wild man
Yes, I think so and agreed with your analyze
This makes so much sense, I'm annoyed again... 😅
Perhaps, but seeing as you can literally hear bamboo grow at times, unlikely. Their food source is a unstoppable weed.
Isn't that essentially what the Malthusian theory states humans are doing to themselves right now?
Pandas have fallen into an evolutive trap, but eventually one thing will save them: Their cuteness
Evolution is a purely reactive process, it evolves animals based on the current environmental pressures not future ones. Specialization is always an evolutionary trap but it keeps happening over and over again organisms want their survival to be as easy as possible so evolving into a food niche that no one else wants always makes sense at the time.
I don't see it; there may always be a small captive population, but their extinction in the wild seems inevitable.
Nope. Cuteness has its shelf life. And they’re not that cute either. They’re dumb and clumsy. No one has patience for that.
@@TJSaw They generate billions of revenue. In China, there are Panda celebrities that can boost and entire province tourism, Do you think panda is going extinct with these revenue for humans? Is that not a success in evolution?
@@OsirisLord Yes this. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video, because the pattern of generalist -> specialist -> extinct is a common one in evolutionary history. Heck it could be considered a key part of natural selection at the species level.
I think you're being unfair to pandas' evolutionary traits. They're large so other predators don't mess with them. But because of their large size they need to eat a lot of food. And there is not much to eat in a bamboo forest. So evolving to eat poisonous bamboo is amazing. And there low birthrate makes sense if there were hundreds of thousands of them. A low birthrate stablizes population and prevents them from starving.
Not really. Pandas have no natural predators because they live in an area without large predators. A tiger would have no problem taking down a panda if it ever encountered one.
@@adriani9432a panda's bite force is still pretty strong although the tiger could definitely kill a panda it's not worth the effort let alone risk a serious injury from a bite or claw swipe (not sure if pandas can do this one with any competency ) and who knows if panda meat is even a meal option for tigers as they wouldn't start a fight for no reward unless it's to defend their territory and in such situations the tiger is better off just scaring the panda away than starting a death match with it so i think even if tigers were to be present in the wild with pandas it wouldn't change much for the pandas anyways
@@godfistleesin1971 if Tigers lived in a bamboo forest with little to no large animals to feed on all the pandas will get wiped out in months lol
I agree, they panda consume more protein than the average black/brown bear which makes up about 20% of the diet while panda can have more the 50% of there diet made up of protein, which is more along with wolves and domestic cats which are carnivores where bears are omnivores.
Pandas also need less territory which is about 4 to 6 square km while a female North America black bear has a home range of 6.5 to 26 square kilometers
As for predation risk, the oldest possible fossil evidence of a panda from a fossilized pseudo thumb dates them back to about 6 Mya, tiger evolved about 3 Mya. Keep in mind that tigers have a hard time dealing with sloth bear’s head to head dispite the fact that the Bengal tiger is larger than the south china tiger but pandas are around the same size as sloth bears. Pandas also have all of their teeth unlike sloth bears which are missing their top two front teeth (incisors), which enables them to suck up termites and other insects with ease. Due to their diet of insects and fruit, their premolars and molars are smaller than those of other bears. Pandas also have an insane bite force of 1,300 to 1,500 psi which is closer to polar bear(1,200 psi) in power than a black bear of similar size of 800 psi. In fact pound for pound a panda can generate more force with its jaws than a tiger of the same weight. There low reproduction rates also show that they aren’t pray upon that often other wise they would have been extinct by the time tigers evolved. Only a large male south china tiger would have the size to take one on and why would you when Muntjac & sambar deer would be better options. A female south china tiger, leopard, and wolves would never think about attacking a adult panda unless in dire circumstances.
Isn't bamboo one of the fastest growing plants in the world, like you can actually see them growing overnight? In a way they should be able to keep the bamboo population in check with how much they eat. Unfortunately, they seem to not want to exist and go extinct. If it wasn't for human intervention, they probably would have gone extinct.
Somebody had to eat bamboos. Pandas bit the bullet and stepped up. Thanks Pandas!
I like fried bamboo shoots, but I don't eat it as often as I want to.
Joke aside, you're kinda right there. Bamboo plants may destroy biodiversity and other food sources if left unchecked
God: I need to assign a group to eat cyanide infused bamboo…. Pandas: I volunteer as tribute!
"...but how is being a clumsy idiot beneficial?" By that metric, A LOT of people wouldn't be alive by now.
they can't chase you down and eat you - therefore left alone - and likely don't taste good
Oh yeah. They existed for millions of years, now we judge and make fun of them because they are having a hard time living in a world we butchered. Seems fair.
Right?
"It sounds like the Panda is just too stupid to know it should die"
Ah, so it's a koala situation, then.
No, things don't evolve "for a reason". They evolve because they could.
Evolution is indeed random and does not happen for a purpose. However, the process of evolution takes shape the way it does primarily through environmental constraints. When she says it happens "for a reason," what she means is "there must have been some sort of constraints such that every other version of the panda died out, and this is the only one that survived."
Which I'm sure she might have said if she was trying to be as lingually precise as possible, but that's largely unnecessary because of a little skill called "extrapolation." Most humans are capable of figuring out what she means by "for a reason" without needing clarification, and so do not need such a degree of precision in language.
Stephanie: "The official term for a group of pandas is an 'embarrassment' of pandas." (2:25)
Crows: "Hey, that's not so bad. Could be a lot worse." 😂
Murder sounds cooler than embarrassment, tho. Not as something to experience, but being a murder of crows is less embarrassing than being an embarrassment of pandas.
And here I thought the sunfish intro was scathing...
Yeah the like to watch ratio versus sub ratio is dropping in most of the videos. This lady keeps making these comments I’m sure the channel will only be relevant for another year at most
Lol so true
@@MrBlackSatelliteWas this written by a panda.
@@alantremonti1381 They make a good point though. We're here for 'Real Science', not school yard insults that are already everywhere on the internet.
Imagine being so bad at existing that the most intelligent animal in the entirety of existence, will take care of you and do everything it takes to make sure your species and you doesn't die. Seems to me they got things figured out
Right! As an evolutionary strategy, "Humans find me cute" beats "Rolls around in poop and eats a ridiculously low energy food source".
@MickPosch lmao
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
Pandas are secretly the final boss, but it wears a cute stupid disguise so we won’t catch on…
@@5falltv895Yeah, we humans have an awfully high opinion of ourselves, don't we?
I disagree that "pandas are victims of their own evolutionary choices." Pandas are a function of evolutionary pressures. They never had any say or choice or agency regarding the matter of their evolution. A niche developed and they evolved to fill it.
Evolution is nothing if not simultaneously both opportunistic and lazy. Pandas were always "good enough" to take advantage of bamboo as it grows and probably flourish during mast years (and likely eat chicks and eggs if abundant enough; our chickens come from the same area as pandas, and their fertility is based on the presence of food and potential mates, which explodes when entire bamboo forests flower, go to seed and die, called "mast years").
Try feeding female pandas lots of raw eggs and chicks, see if that doesn't trigger higher fertility.
quit axtually-ing over some poor word choice that was dont on purpose for entertainment - you dont actually look smart doing this
@@xBINARYGODx Someone has a good point about a thing somewhere? Can't have that, can you?
@xBINARYGODx and you just seem RUDE AF
The way pandas eat is unlike those of herbivorous mammals, they are very similar to the route taken by caterpillars. Pandas and caterpillars are basically juicing machines. They ignore the rough, tough to digest fibres altogether, break up plant materials using their exceptionally strong mandibles, and squeeze out the protein and fats for maximum efficiency. This is the best way to tackle tough, often toxic plant materials. In contrast, many ungulates like horses and cows are often very sensitive to toxins and die easily on small doses.
As a Christian, denying the existence of evolution is silly.
Same, I don’t get why people act like you can’t believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. Seems like a closed minded way of thinking to think you gotta believe in one or the other
Both can be true and I’m not religious,,, why can’t god have created the Big Bang?
@Da_Juice I've always believed God is capable of evolution. If a person believed that he was capable of all things, he is capable of evolution. The Bible was written at a time no one had an understanding of the world around them, it doesn't make it wrong. The Bible doesn't say God created gravity or the atomic theory, regardless. The Bible says he created all things, so that would include the forces that government the universe as well. Science is a means of understanding those forces. Genesis states 7 days to create...but that was before time existed, so 7 days may be 4 billion of our years, not God's. Or it was just what was understood by the writers of the old testament.
@@theawesomest2850Biblical literalists are an extremely odd and disconcertingly large portion of Christians.
@@JaylaStarr Because just because we can't explain something, doesn't mean magic is involved
Dang Stephanie doing a full on hit piece on the Pandas. I'm here for it haha
😂
She did a total takedown on the Sun Fish, and discovered she enjoyed it! I wonder what poor defenceless creature she will slap around next? ;-)
@@loopernoodling also did one on sloths and it was a total character assassination too haha.
@@loopernoodling 🙋🏿♂️
Pandas: *exist*
Stephanie: And I took that personally
it makes me extremely curious- if we turned on the ability to taste and enjoy meat in a panda's DNA, would it eat meat? would it behave different at all?
I agree that pandas are pretty poorly "designed" but I love seeing what evolution can do. we're basically observing the early early stages of the birth of a new herbivore
like, that's fascinating
"If we turned on the ability to taste and enjoy meat in a panda's DNA, would it eat meat?" This sounds like the premise of a horror movie.
I think pandas evolved to live off of humans being easily distracted by cute and fluffy things
Nothing evolves with a purpose just in a direction… pandas happened to evolve in z direction we think is cute good for them… rats happened to evolve in a direction that made them great at hiding in sewers and eating scraps so good for them… the effect can further strengthen the direction through forced natural selection where those that get better at eating our scraps survive better and there for continue the story further like a sort of survivors bias. Although as cuteness is objective and it doesn’t really do anything to help them survive on the wild I doubt it would be accurate to say the direction they evolved in was beneficial due to their cutness.
@@dreammaker9642 it dit help in them effectively being used as the sole symbol of environment protection. As they are used as the brand symbol by WWF representing there goal in protecting nature in general.
@ I mean great but it’s not like they getting royalties for it. What I mean is for the species as a whole it does fokol for them cause they still losing habitat and going extinct. Now for those in captivity it keeps the species going in a way but in captivity which defeats the purpose.
"why would God create pandas?"
I mean look at them, why not?
They are the cutest
the protein facts about bamboo are fascinating, didn't know that. 👍
Imagine if they had the gut biome of gorillas
There is always one weirdo in a family.
Panda's are somewhat lucky that humans are suckers for cute things, and they happen to have a cuteness factor.
Raccoons are from the same family as bears? WOW didn’t knew that.
Same
They are called trash pandas for a reason...
They're called vaskebjørn for a reason
No, they are not. They are from family Procyonidae, while bears and panda are from family Ursidae. You can see it on the phylogenic tree shown in he video. They do share a common ancestor however.
@@so-ares, that's because they are closely related to the red panda, which is the "true", and the first to be discovered and classified, Panda.
Red pandas are not bears, like raccoons are not, they are from the family "Mustelidae" and bears from "Ursidae", and they are all in the order "Carnivora" along with the Felidae and Canidae families. Raccoons are trash pandas because of red pandas and not giant pandas.
I think the main reason why we still have Pandas in the first place considering all their terrible traits is because of human intervention.
I can hear Larry David explaining them - "It's a shit bear'
Let the Pandas go exciting already! Free them into the bamboo forests and if they survive they survive. They don't even seem to be important for their own ecosystem.
One of my favourite facts about panda stupidity is you can trick them into raising more than one cub at a time, simply by swapping the cubs out when the panda isn't looking.
Pandas may have found the most inefficient way to avoid extinction but they DID find a way to get everyone else on board with saving them: Being super cute 🥰
What's going on?
A Real Science video about an animal whose biology isn't *insane.*
To be fair, the alternative title (at 2:55) DOES say: "The Insanely Bad Biology of The Panda". 🙂
"Sometime we just have to take care of the idiots amongst us" i feel like i need that on a t-shirt; with a big dumb cute panda on it.
Maybe I am a panda
surviving on mac&cheese
I think we should take the cue and let Natural Selection take care of them.
I have read that the panda’s pseudo-thumb is actually an ancestral trait of arctoidea. The spectacled bear sometimes have a pseudo-thumb despite being short faced bears that are more closely related to typical ursine bears than to pandas.
That's what make both the spectacled bear and panda astonishing is that they are both the last surviving members of each of their own subfamily of bears the short faced bears and the running bear which includes the largest known bears and the only bears in Africa.
Atlas bear ? You mean sub-Saharan Africa @@andrewgan557
Creationists who think the world was created as is; are a true miracle. That this level of stupidity among families among so much information somehow didn't get weeded out millennia ago.
Eh. They seem to do well enough. They've been alive for millions of years and would be doing fine if people didn't fuck with their habitat. Leave it to people to blame the animal for being unable to adapt to a world that people change to suit their own needs.
Didn't the records show they were already declining long before humans showed up?
Remind me to a comic where a guy scream/complain "Why do bears keep attacking our settlement" while bulldozing through forrest
Exactly. Thank you.
Pandas are playing 5D chess, the bamboo strategy was only a stepping stone for the true goal of being 'too cute to fail'.
I don't know who has been dunked on more at this point by @Real Science, the sunfish, or the panda... But the panda being related to such powerfull creatures such as bears, I think deserves it more. She did my boy sunfish wrong a lot, poor guy, I laughed so hard at that intro too tho 😂
Bamboos aren't the only thing Pandas have exploited. It's also human emotion and empathy. Cuteness aggression enabled. leave beastmode!
Maybe they were playing the long game. They plan for humanity to care for them. Because theyre so damn cute
Blaming pandas for not having survivability is ignoring that humans destroyed their habitats.
Regarding the poop… have any researchers looked into the possibility that the pandas are picking up herbivore (horse) gut bacteria when they do this?
Only if they ate it. Sure didn't look like it in the video. Good thought, though.
panda just put all their point in cuteness, and it somehow worked
I had no idea that bamboo was poisonous. Aren't bamboo shoots edible? Do they only become poisonous later?
Pandas are a reminder that evolution does not "think". Evolution is a random process. Countless extinct animals show how often the plan doesn't work. You begin to understand how lucky the living are.
I think as much as they adapted to bamboo, they also adapted to eating insects that live within the bamboo which would probably provide a lot of calories for them.
If panda only exists in the US, the tone would be totally different.
We would say "Why Pandas are so cute and chill".
Pandas: Live peacefully, eat, sleep and roll for fun.
Humans: Oh, a mistake of evolution
Humans: Kill and torture each other, believe in gods and spirits, cause the sixth mass extinction.
Also humans: How are we so intelligent
I mean, having extreme emotions are a sign of intelligence.
But we put humans in a piece of metal and we throw it to the moon or we make microchips that work in the scale of an atom.
If you think animals don't kill and torture each other or haven't caused extinctions in the past, boy, are you gullible.
@@HalfLifeHalfDead But pandas do not which makes them smarter than your average world leader
@@prixe12 It would if they had the capacity to do that and choose not to. Not if they are too lethargic and stupid to do anything.
You are simply amazing. Great videos great charm. The way you tell the story and the perfect tone sometimes serious and sometimes playful delivers a brilliant experience to us!!!
Only the Strong Survive
Pandas: Challenge Accepted 🐼
What I understand is that there is a reason why pandas evolved as such. Evolution works on really long time periods, so for all those years without disturbance, pandas peacefully had the big bamboo forests to themselves, and could reproduce slowly to ensure there is not too many pandas in one forest (as another commenter pointed out). However, this was contingent on things staying relatively constant or only gradually changing as per evolutionary time scales. Just as with any other endangered or extinct animal, its really humans who brought such a fast change that pandas got the short end of the (bamboo) stick.
Pandas should be labeled anthropocene dependents alongside domestic cattle. Essentially they survive because humanity conciously allows it. If we even forget that they exist, never mind actually killing them on purpose, they'd go extinct in short order.
Except that they were thriving throughout vast swathes of Asia before Homo Sapiens even existed there. They are endangered because of humans destroying their habitat, nothing else.
Mad pompous in this one. If pandas are dumb how have they lasted so long?
Same reason my dumb manager is where he is, luck
They have the power to be a bear but instead decide not to????
Welcome to evolution.
I am sure afraid that the same thing is happening with humans too, they are not Sapiens anymore
If I offered you the ability to spend all day lazing around and eating free food that grew everywhere around you , don't tell me you wouldn't be tempted.
Do you see anything in a bamboo forest they can hunt on?
Perspective is a wonderful thing. It could easily be said that adapting to a food source that is so full of cyanide that no other animal will touch it is a great move. Not over breeding also keeps their food source plentiful.
The mistake here is not anything to do with evolution, it is ascribing purpose or motive to the process. Whether or not that is intentional, it is almost always where the description goes. Right from the question in the thumbnail it is here. Evolution can't make a "mistake" It has no end goal. It has no aim.
The Red Panda is the true and first Panda, this is the Giant Panda, or false Panda.
"The giant panda was initially considered the "true" panda because of its prominence and size. However, the red panda was actually described and named scientifically before the giant panda, receiving the name panda in 1825. The term “panda” is derived from the Nepali word ponya, meaning bamboo or plant-eating animal."
So the giant panda only is known by the name "Panda" due to its popularity, not by taxonomy. The true "Panda" is the red one.
Do they eat bamboo?
Yes, they do.
Pubic lice are also in danger of dying out. why don't we save them?
Are you volunteering?
"Sometimes we have to take care of the idiots amongst us" is just such a beautifully wholesome sentiment.
Thank you for calling out the evolution deniers. It drives me crazy how someone can say it doesn't exist with the amount of evidence we have that it does.
I guess life ...uh, finds a way
Panda: starts eating bamboo instead of meat in order to survive in bamboo forests.
Darwin: “that’s a bold strategy, Cotton.”
Pandas 🐼 make sense when you remember virtually all herbivores cannot grasp bamboo 🎍, as they don't have hands of the right size, so suck at eating it.
So they have no competition. And no competition makes even a terrible lifestyle viable.
TBF, not a lot of hands in general in the animal kingdom.
Well done. Very good presentation and content. Thank you!
Actual evolution advantage: being cute.
9:51 why are cats shown to be herbivores in that graph? I get if cats are able to process cyanide in low doses maybe, but they are obligate carnivores. Just sayin.
They are not shown to be herbivores but rather its showing what levels of this enzyme carnivores have as comparison. It isn't much at all. And pandas only have a little more than a true carnivore
@ ah ok, that makes sense. I got confused by the title at the top that said herbivore. Thank you for the clarification! 💕
7:43 A SUCCULENT CHINESE MEAL!?
You have the best narrative voice after David Attenborough’s.
Fascinating video about the Panda! However, one glaring mistake is that Bears are not true hibernators. They undergo states of torpor during the winter months. The very best hibernators on the planet are Bats! 👍👍🦇🦇
"Sometimes we just have to take care of the idiots amongst us." Wow, that's really a charged line.
Ikr, and then people call it wholesome, like what?
I paused at 2:50 and could not stop laughing =D
I feel like after the panda an episode on the coyote would be a great contrast.
Coyotes are impressively good at existing
15:59 Alright, now w know how to survive in cold....
About as useless as Koalas
"Sometimes we need to take care for the idiots amongst us" is my new favourite sentence 😂
Thanks for another great video! So harsh when it's laid out all together 😅.
I really like the fact that you're more in front of the camera too 👍 it conveys another level to the information 🙂
This is an episode that deserves the "insane" moniker and yet you didn't use it in the title? For shame lol. These animals are insanely lucky to still be walking this Earth!!
Once, while deep in a Graham Hancock-esque rabbit hole on youtube, i came across the theory of pandas being the remnants of a domesticated animal from an very old civilization of humans that has since disappeared. All that was left of those humans was this pet that had been domesticated and genetically altered so much that it couldn't live without human care. In my thc induced state of mind it all made so much sense
We GOTTA get you on mushrooms
Pandas know they are cute, thats enough for us and them ^___^
Murphy’s law dictates if something can be done incorrectly then somewhere somehow someone will mess it up… Pandas are kind of evidence Murphy’s law applies to evolution… Pandas are essentially bearing wrong cause someone had to do it
Survival of the Luckiest
imagine being the most intelligent animal in existence wiping out 90% of other animals and environments and gaslighting the wayyyy older animals designs
They’re perfect for living life eating bamboo.
Scientists: Crap, we can't test the pandas with poop. Sooo... 👀
Mice: oh no
Let's see...microbiome is known to be eleventy trillion % essential to healthy living. Horses eat and process an equal amount of grass per day.
We're still wondering why pandas are attracted to horse poop? Wouldn't even a slightly more effective microbiome be a pretty big benefit to a creature that only eats one of the least nutrient available plants on earth?
That could be the case if they ate horse poop but rubbing it all over you does nothing to the gut microbiome.
@dnservice ...because of pandas' well know habit of constant hand washing, right? Yeah...I forgot. /s
Yeah...no, your microbiome isn't exclusively populated via things you actually consume. Bacteria transfer can be more incidental.
Excellent attempt at thinking, though. You're not all the way there, and I'd have gone with predator evasion from the scent or something if I were looking to seem certain while being completely uninformed...but you do you.
Having kept horses for many years, seen a lot of horse shit, I can say that HS is mainly undigested fibre. By rolling in the HS, pandas are adding an extra layer of insulation over their fur. As the video shows, scientists think this enables them to withstand the cold for longer. This behaviour gives them an advantage during extremes of cold. The argument that they also pick up beneficial herbivore bacteria is without merit as pandas already have adapted to a vegetarian diet, and there is no evidence that equine bacteria would survive and function in what is largely a carnivore gut. The simplest explanation is often the correct one.
PS. My dogs love to roll in horse poo. No evolutionary explanation for it.
@majorbruster5916 Doesn't seem to jive with the easily googleable Nature article on this very subject. "Insulation" is actual warmth retention. The Chinese researchers hypothesis was that a chemical compound in the poop made them "feel" warmer, but other researchers don't buy that reasoning completely.
Also, dogs roll in poop to mask their scent. It's pretty well accepted that this is a vestigial evolutionary adaptation handed down from wolves, who do the exact same thing in order to mask their scent from prey.
Congrats on the horse poop. You seem to have evolved to produce it yourself.
This is peak RUclips for me.
I know this channel does this to appeal to a wider and younger audience, and normally i'm all for that, but the constant flaming of Panda's in this video was just too much for me. It's not funny to call them stupid all the time and actually makes it harder for me to recommend these otherwise amazing videos to my friends and family
People say they want to see the world and mean a flight to south-east asia, when they haven't even taken a good look at their backyard yet.
Wild how humans came around to destroy the ecosystem and then blame the animals for struggling lmao. Also wild that we didn't acknowledge how the meat eating panda ancestors all kicked the bucket but the bamboo eaters are still around lol
Pretty please don't delete the comment this time? 🥺
Were you dropped on your head as a baby?
@ Oh no, right in my emotions :'(
Can't tell if you're serious or just ignorant - no pandas "kicked the bucket" from eating meat, they EVOLVED to stop eating meat and now eat bamboo. This happened milions of years ago over likely hundreds of thousands of years or more. It's not like one day they woke up and decided, it happens INCREDIBLY slowly and gradually.
Think about this - if you took a picture of a baby every single day from birth to say 20 years old could you pick out the exact picture where they are now an infant? A toddler? A child? Young adult? NO - as it's so incredibly gradual the day-to-day difference isn't there, you have to take it over months/years - or in this case MILLIONS of years.
Bingo. This video basicly sux and deserves way more 👎👎
I do wonder with how pandas are could they technically still consume meat? Like even just eating insects that also live in the same general area. Like ants or thermites. it would still leave them a round the bamboo but have just a bit more resources available.
Let alone even just higher level of meat based sources.
18:11 wait, POACHING? Who could kill a panda!? They are the most adorable creature WTF!?!?
Pandas are perfect example for evolution, because it shows that even creationists survive in our world contrary to all expectations.
I have never liked Panda's, now I have a full blown scientific reason for it lol
2-7days in a whole year to mate? Bruh
The panda hate be CRAZY
But more importantly, funny as hell. Her sense of humor had me in stitches.
2:44 "How is being a clumsy idiot beneficial?", you ask... Well, some end up being presidents! 🤣🤣🤣
Imagine being a creationist in 2024 😂😂😂
There's soooooooo many of them
This is not rhetoric that will help with this problem
@@dcd1359 Sometimes you just gotta point and laugh.
@@realscience Panda 🐼 was created by God so that us people can appreciate the cuteness and sillyness in those fur balls. Similar to how he created cute cats for our fun.
@@realscienceThis is why I've been asking for years for social media apps to block continents geographically. Imagine how beautiful and useful the internet would be if we didn't have to endure Americans on it.
An animal that requires human intervention to prevent extinction. It’s the perfect mascot for for the world wildlife fund. Spend millions to keep this stupid animal alive, because it wants to kill itself.
They had been doing perfectly fine before humans developed agriculture which took a lot of lands. the fact that their habitat is located in the most populated province in all of China didn't help either. If I remember correctly, there used to be tigers living in that region too. But they died out due to human community expansion and lost of habitat, while the Giant Pandas survived.