From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genus of bears
Ailuropoda is the only extant
genus in the
ursid (bear)
subfamily
Ailuropodinae . It contains one living and three fossil species of panda.
[4]
Only one species—
Ailuropoda melanoleuca —currently exists; the other three species are prehistoric
chronospecies . Despite its
taxonomic classification as a
carnivoran , the giant panda has a
diet that is primarily
herbivorous , which consists almost exclusively of
bamboo .
Giant pandas have descended from
Ailurarctos , which lived during the late
Miocene .
[4]
Etymology
Giant panda eye
From Greek αἴλουρος aílouros "cat" + ‒ποδός ‒podós "foot" (gen. sg.). Unlike most bears, giant pandas do not have round pupils, but instead have vertical slits, similar to those of cats. This has not only inspired the scientific name, but in Chinese the giant panda is called "large bear cat" (大熊猫 , dà xióngmāo ).
Classification
Other pandas
The
red, or lesser, panda (Ailurus fulgens ) was formerly considered closely related to the giant panda. It is no longer considered a bear, however, and is now classified as the sole living representative of a different carnivore family (
Ailuridae ).
References
^
Milne-Edwards, Alphonse (1870).
"Note sur quelques mammifères du Thibet oriental" . Annales des sciences naturelles, Zoologie . Ser. 5. 14 (10): 1.
^
Milne-Edwards, Alphonse (1870).
"Note sur quelques Mammifères du Thibet oriental" . Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences . 70 : 341–342.
^
a
b
David, Armand (1869).
"Voyage en Chine" . Bulletin des Nouvelles Archives du Muséum . 5 : 13. Ursus melanoleucus
^
a
b Jin, Changzhu;
Russell L. Ciochon ; Wei Dong; Robert M. Hunt Jr.; Jinyi Liu; Marc Jaeger & Qizhi Zhu (June 19, 2007).
"The first skull of the earliest giant panda" .
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 104 (26): 10932–10937.
Bibcode :
2007PNAS..10410932J .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.0704198104 .
PMC
1904166 .
PMID
17578912 .
^
Pei, Wen-chung (1962).
"Guǎngxī liǔchéng jù yuán dòng jí qítā shāndòng de dì sì jì bǔrǔ dòngwù" 广西柳城巨猿洞及其他山洞的第四纪哺乳动物 [Quaternary Mammals from the Liucheng Gigantopithecus Cave and Other Caves of Kwangsi] (PDF) . Vertebrata PalAsiatica . 6 (3): 211–218.
^
Pei, Wen-Chung (1963).
"Quaternary Mammals From the Liucheng Gigantopithecus Cave and Other Caves of Kwangsi" (PDF) . Scientia Sinica . 12 (2): 221–229. Archived from
the original (PDF) on 2017-08-21. Retrieved 2017-07-20 .
^ Wang, Linghong; Lin, Yufen; Chan, Shaowu; Yuan, Jiarong (1982).
"Húnán shěng xīběi bù xīn fāxiàn de bǔrǔ dòngwù huàshí jí qí yìyì" 湖南省西北部新发现的哺乳动物化石及其意义 [Mammalian Fossils Found in Northwest Part of Hunan Province and Their Significance] (PDF) . Vertebrata PalAsiatica . 20 (4): 350–358.
^
Woodward, A. Smith (1915).
"On the Skull of an extinct Mammal related to Æluropus from a Cave in the Ruby Mines at Mogok, Burma" . Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London . 85 (III): 425–428.
doi :
10.1111/j.1469-7998.1915.tb07605.x .
^ Wan, Qiu-Hong; Wu, Hua; Fang, Sheng-Guo (2005).
"A New Subspecies of Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca ) from Shaanxi, China" . Journal of Mammalogy . 86 (2): 397–402.
doi :
10.1644/BRB-226.1 .
JSTOR
4094359 .