The red panda (Ailurus fulgens, or “shining cat” in Latin) is a denizen of the same bamboo forests of China that harbor the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, meaning “black and white cat-foot”). They also subsist largely on bamboo leaves, though they’re a bit more omnivorous than their larger relative. Although it’s called the “lesser panda”, and is sympatric with A. melanoleuca, red pandas aren’t that closely related: the red panda is in the family Ailuridae and superfamily Mustiloidea, along with otters, skunks, weasels and raccoons, while the giant panda is in the family Ursidae, along with other bears.
When I was in graduate school, it was still debated whether giant pandas were really closely related to bears, a question that was resolved using molecular analysis: immunological distance. The study, by Vince Sarich, was published in Nature in a paper with a wonderfully concise title: “The giant panda is a bear.” The phylogenetic position of red pandas was resolved in several later studies.
But enough of the biology lesson—let’s end a long week with a video of this delightful animal training for the next Olympics:
And for extra squee, some red panda babies from the Knoxville Zoo:
The red panda/giant panda pseudoconfusion plays a starring role in the creationist pseudotext, “Of Pandas and People”, that was at the centre of the Kitzmiller case; I wrote about it her: http://www.cese.org/downloads/2011-11beacon.pdf (p.6)
The two red pandas are the stars at Birmingham Nature Centre. They walk like a cartoon; all 4 paws are bent slightly inwards, the animal bounces along, instead of walking, and the head lolls slightly from side-to-side; added to which the face looks as if it is always smiling. They’re great.
A few years back, they went missing and were found 4 or so miles away; they simply walked from the top of one tree to another, out of the cage and wandered round the suburbs of Brum for a bit.
Super-cute and characterful as hell.
Red pandas have long been a favorite of mine. I have never spent time around any, but they seem so playful, so fun. They remind me of otters, another favorite.
And those tails!
The original demonstration that the Giant Panda is a bear was a careful anatomical study by D. Dwight Davis of the Field Museum in Chicago. He was able to dissect the preserved body of a Giant Panda that had lived in a zoo in Chicago. His 1964 anatomical treatise is available oneline here. He concludes (p. 322) that “Every morphological feature examined indicates that the giant panda is nothing more than a highly specialized bear.” Sarich’s molecular studies (and more since) have verified this.
It turns out that the Giant Panda lineage is the first split from the bears (i.e., all the rest of the bears are more closely related to each other than to the Giant Panda. The Red Panda is in the raccoons but also is the earliest split from them. So a speculation: could it be that the common ancestor of bears and raccoons lived in Asia and ate bamboo?
Exactly, as regards the ancestry (I assume you’re joking about the diet). In fact, the classification of the red panda as raccoon-like is one of the things that Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire agreed about (and got right), way back in 1825. “Of pandas and People” claims that until the 1964 study that you mention, scientists had been unanimous in classifying red panda and giant panda together. That’s a flat-out lie.
I’m actually not joking about the eating of bamboo. If one made a naive model with two states (eats bamboo / doesn’t) one would require three changes of state if one evolved to eat bamboo and then lost this adaptation in the bear relatives of the Giant Panda, and also in the raccoon relatives of the Red Panda. Or one could have two changes if the eating of bamboo evolved separately in the two types of panda.
If evolving the eating of bamboo were considerably more difficult than losing that, then the former would be the favored scenario.
Fair point. But there are several nodes in between the red panda and the giant panda. So EITHER bamboo eating evolved twice independently, OR it was lost independently in (at least) skunks, raccoons, pinnipeds, and non-panda bears. And the same argument can be applied to the “thumb”.
I was assuming a phylogeny in which the bears (with the Giant Panda) and the raccooon group (including the Red Panda) were sister groups. Within each, the “panda” was the first lineage to split off.
But you’re right, I see that this may well not be the phylogeny, which would invalidate my argument.
However, looking at a few papers it does not appear that there is a consensus on the phylogeny yet.
I think you’re being too cautious. See http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/mpev.2000.0819
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18328735
The Timetree of life, http://www.timetree.org/pdf/Eizirik2009Chap79.pdf
Prothero “Evolution”, fig 13.12
The red panda was indigenous to North America during the Miocene. A new species was recently described from the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. The Gray Fossil Site is a Miocene sinkhole formed in Devonian limestones. I had the pleasure of visiting the site in 2006, during its partial excavation by East Tennessee State University. I think this is only the second find of red panda in North America.
It’s just like a Red Chinese Panda to be taking jobs away from American Olympic contenders.
Seriously cute.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.