This study actually claims the opposite but it’s just the first one I found. It’s from 2021 so I’ll report back if I find anything more recent. Or counter to this
Yeah searching “giant panda color patterning heat regulation” only seems to turn up articles and studies that show that the patterning is actually for camouflage…
Also don’t pandas reproduce just fine in the wild given the right habitat? And the real issue is human encroaching and destruction of said habitat? So really shouldn’t the panda be saying “I’m alive despite you fuckers keep destroying where I fucking live.”?
No, Pandas are probably one of the best examples we have of an evolutionary dead end. They basically lost their gene to like eating meat, so they adapted to eating bamboo because it’s plentiful and nobody else was eating it. The problem with that is it takes a lot of bamboo to replace a meat diet. Especially because they never developed an herbivore digestive system. So they only process about 20 percent of what they eat. This in turn means they need large solitary ranges and that makes reproduction in the wild hard. Even more so because female Pandas have something like 2 days a year they’re fertile.
Humans certainly impacted them badly but there’s a lot of evidence they would likely go extinct without human intervention.
This study argues the exact opposite of what you’re saying and is generally accepted as evidence that most of what you just stated is a mix conjecture, exaggeration and misconception. Do you have reference for the evidence that says they’d go extinct?
The only really new thing in there is the genetic diversity. Some of that paper is a straight up thought experiment meant to persuade, not report findings. For example, the bit about flowering bamboo and how they must have endured thousands of such events in 8 million years. In rebuttal I would ask how do the authors of that paper know that the population hasn’t been getting whittled down by such events, bit by bit. They make suppositions about ranging farther for food, but again provide no findings. There are multiple other problems with the paper, including mischaracterizing their own tables but I’ll leave it there.
I will say that paper does a good job summarizing the position of people saying they will go extinct. By the way the full paper is freely available at Molecular Biology and Evolution. I would love to be wrong, they are very fun to watch. And if they can thrive with their habitats reconnected and protected then that’s great. But I’m also not going to be surprised to find out it’s just not in the cards.
I don’t know that I agree. As you say, they need large solitary ranges, and they can’t get that because of humans. To me, that’s the bulk of the equation. Sure, their requirements are significant, and resources are finite, but arguably that’s true of every species.
The problem, boiled down to resources, is that they have higher resource needs than other animals of similar size. Which has never been a good sign for evolutionary development.
Certainly true, can’t argue with any of that. And evolution does inherently run into plenty of dead ends. My only counterpoint would be that if human encroachment never deprived them of habitat, and we gave them a geologic timescale, normal genetic mutation and natural selection could still eventually result in a more efficient digestive tract for their diet, allowing them to thrive.
Ultimately, that’s more of a little thought experiment than anything else, as those conditions don’t exist; and even if they did, even my grandchildren wouldn’t live to see the results. I just feel bad for the panda, as I suspect human impact will prevent them from surviving to ever get the opportunity, even if the odds are against them.
Really? Have a source? Sounds like it could be an interesting read if you have something.
This study actually claims the opposite but it’s just the first one I found. It’s from 2021 so I’ll report back if I find anything more recent. Or counter to this
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8553760/
Yeah searching “giant panda color patterning heat regulation” only seems to turn up articles and studies that show that the patterning is actually for camouflage…
Also don’t pandas reproduce just fine in the wild given the right habitat? And the real issue is human encroaching and destruction of said habitat? So really shouldn’t the panda be saying “I’m alive despite you fuckers keep destroying where I fucking live.”?
No, Pandas are probably one of the best examples we have of an evolutionary dead end. They basically lost their gene to like eating meat, so they adapted to eating bamboo because it’s plentiful and nobody else was eating it. The problem with that is it takes a lot of bamboo to replace a meat diet. Especially because they never developed an herbivore digestive system. So they only process about 20 percent of what they eat. This in turn means they need large solitary ranges and that makes reproduction in the wild hard. Even more so because female Pandas have something like 2 days a year they’re fertile.
Humans certainly impacted them badly but there’s a lot of evidence they would likely go extinct without human intervention.
I mean this is what I’m talking about with the beginning of my last paragraph.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25274274/
This study argues the exact opposite of what you’re saying and is generally accepted as evidence that most of what you just stated is a mix conjecture, exaggeration and misconception. Do you have reference for the evidence that says they’d go extinct?
The only really new thing in there is the genetic diversity. Some of that paper is a straight up thought experiment meant to persuade, not report findings. For example, the bit about flowering bamboo and how they must have endured thousands of such events in 8 million years. In rebuttal I would ask how do the authors of that paper know that the population hasn’t been getting whittled down by such events, bit by bit. They make suppositions about ranging farther for food, but again provide no findings. There are multiple other problems with the paper, including mischaracterizing their own tables but I’ll leave it there.
I will say that paper does a good job summarizing the position of people saying they will go extinct. By the way the full paper is freely available at Molecular Biology and Evolution. I would love to be wrong, they are very fun to watch. And if they can thrive with their habitats reconnected and protected then that’s great. But I’m also not going to be surprised to find out it’s just not in the cards.
I don’t know that I agree. As you say, they need large solitary ranges, and they can’t get that because of humans. To me, that’s the bulk of the equation. Sure, their requirements are significant, and resources are finite, but arguably that’s true of every species.
The problem, boiled down to resources, is that they have higher resource needs than other animals of similar size. Which has never been a good sign for evolutionary development.
Certainly true, can’t argue with any of that. And evolution does inherently run into plenty of dead ends. My only counterpoint would be that if human encroachment never deprived them of habitat, and we gave them a geologic timescale, normal genetic mutation and natural selection could still eventually result in a more efficient digestive tract for their diet, allowing them to thrive.
Ultimately, that’s more of a little thought experiment than anything else, as those conditions don’t exist; and even if they did, even my grandchildren wouldn’t live to see the results. I just feel bad for the panda, as I suspect human impact will prevent them from surviving to ever get the opportunity, even if the odds are against them.
This makes me a sad panda…
Who lives in the trees with gorilla pee…