- Asiatic lion
- Aye-aye
- Black howler monkey
- Black lion tamarin
- Black rat
- Brown rat, Norway rat
- Brush-tailed bettong
- Capybara
- Common squirrel monkey
- De Brazza's Monkey
- Geoffroy's marmoset
- Dwarf mongoose
- Goeldi's monkey
- Giant jumping rat
- Golden-headed lion tamarin
- Golden lion tamarin
- Grey mouse lemur
- Javan langur
- Lac Alaotra gentle lemur, Bandro
- Lion-tailed macaque
- Livingstone's fruit bat
- Mongoose lemur
- White-faced saki
- Naked mole rat
- North American river otter
- Okapi
- Owl monkey
- Pygmy hippopotamus
- Pygmy slow loris
- Red panda
- Red ruffed lemur
- Ring-tailed lemur
- Sand cat
- Slender-tailed meerkat
- South American fur seal
- South American tapir
- Southern pudu
- Spiny mouse
- Two-toed sloth
- Water vole
- Western lowland gorilla
Red panda
Scientific name: Ailurus fulgens
Country: Bhutan, India, Nepal, Laos, Myanmar, China.
Continent: Asia
Diet: Bamboo, grasses - graminivore, roots - radicivore, nuts - nucivore, occasionally insects and rodents.
Food & feeding: Herbivore
Habitats: Temperate forest, woodland
Conservation status: Endangered
Relatives: Raccoon
Description: The red panda's fur is long, thick and fuzzy to protect it against rain and cold and its colour perhaps helps the panda to blend with the reddish moss and white lichen growing on the fir trees of its mountainous habitat at up to 5000 m altitude. These pandas have fur on the soles of their feet to aid grip on wet branches and to keep them warm when walking on snow. They are 50 -60 cm long and weigh between 3 and 6 kg.
Lifestyle: They are excellent climbers, using their strong claws to grasp branches. The jaws are powerful and the teeth and forelimbs are specially adapted for manipulating and crushing bamboo shoots and leaves, which make up 95% of their diet. Red pandas are nocturnal, spending most of their day asleep in trees. As their bamboo diet is low in nutrition, sleeping for much of the day may help save energy.
Family & friends: Adult red pandas are essentially solitary, only coming together to mate.
Keeping in touch: Red pandas have glands located near their anus that produce a musky scent which may be used in scent-marking territories. They can also make a series of hisses and snorts when startled.
Growing up: The female usually gives birth to twins and they are weaned at 4 -5 months. When suckling the cubs she must eat three times the normal amount of bamboo in order to produce rich milk. The cubs stay with the mother for roughly a year.
The word panda comes from the Nepalese 'Nigalya ponya' which means bamboo eater. The red panda is also known as the lesser panda or red cat bear. In China it is called 'hon ho' or 'fire fox'.
Conservation news: The major threat to the red panda is habitat destruction. The loss of the forests which support the bamboo continues at an alarming rate, due to demand for land and timber by increasing human populations in China and Nepal.
