Adorable Facts About The Red Panda

When people think of pandas, their minds probably immediately go to the black-and-white animals that eat bamboo and live in China. However, while these giant pandas might be the most famous, they’re not the only animals with this name. There are also red pandas, which have been seeing a decent amount of love recently.

Much smaller than giant pandas, these creatures aren’t actually related to their larger counterparts. So, don’t be fooled by the name, which just means ‘eater of bamboo.’ If you’ve longed to know more about these cute critters, you might need the adorable facts about the red panda that may well interest you.

The Firefox web browser has a strong connection to red pandas

If you’ve ever seen or used the internet browser Firefox, you’ve probably assumed that the logo is meant to be a fox. The name is kind of a giveaway, right? However, it turns out that the browser might actually be named after red pandas, as this is what an English translation of the animal’s name is. The intention was reportedly originally to call the browser Firebird, but this was changed because something already existed with that name. Mozilla, who created Firefox, even adopted several red pandas in 2010, which users could watch through a live camera feed.

Red pandas primarily eat bamboo leaves, which aren’t that nutritious

Red pandas are technically considered carnivores, though that doesn’t mean you need to be worried when you see one. This designation apparently stems from the fact that they’re descended from the same ancestors as some other carnivores. However, much of their diet consists of bamboo - the leaves, in particular. Their focus on this part of the plant isn’t particularly good for them because it lacks nutrition, so red pandas can spend more than half a day eating and scavenging just to get the intake they need. They can also consequently lose a fair amount of weight whenever winter rolls around.

These animals have shown themselves to be talented escape artists

As cute and adorable as red pandas may be, they’re seemingly not the sort of animal you can ever expect to stay in one place for too long. It appears that several of these creatures have broken out from zoos in the past, with red pandas consequently being dubbed as “escape artists.” One of these escapes occurred at the Smithsonian National Zoo in 2013 when the animal made it out using a tree branch. A similar situation occurred in Dresden, Germany, with incidents also occurring in Rotterdam, London, and Birmingham. It seems these are some slippery little fellows.

Red pandas and giant pandas both have false thumbs, but for different reasons

Even though red pandas and giant pandas aren’t related, they still bear some remarkable similarities. That includes both of them having false thumbs as a result of an extended wrist bone. Interestingly, although they both have this feature, the reason it evolved differs between the two animals. For red pandas, it apparently emerged to help them climb trees, with the creatures later utilizing it to help them eat bamboo. As for giant pandas, it’s reportedly because of their bamboo diet that they developed these false thumbs to make it easier to chow down on their meals.

They’ve apparently lived in parts of Europe and North America before

If you wish to see red pandas in their natural habitat, you’ll need to visit high-altitude, temperate forests filled with bamboo. That means hiking somewhere like the Himalayas, with the animals known to exist in China, Nepal, and India. While they might be prominent in Asia, though, it seems they have lived in various parts of Europe and North America before. In 1888, parts of a red panda fossil were discovered in the UK, with more emerging later in places like Spain and the US. So, it seems that these used to be quite a global animal.

Red pandas are a similar size to cats but have much bushier tails

If you’ve never seen a red panda in person before, something worth noting is that they’re roughly the size of domestic cats. They’re only a little bigger than these animals, meaning it probably wouldn’t be too much trouble to pick them up. However, while their size might be similar to these creatures, something that sets them apart is their tails. These can apparently be up to 18 inches long, with those bushy features used to help red pandas balance and stay warm up in the mountains. They’ll even wrap their tails around themselves to keep the cold at bay.

Red pandas are fascinating creatures that only seem to become more adorable the more that we learn about them. Sadly, there are apparently fewer than 10,000 red pandas still alive in the wild, raising concerns that they may go extinct sooner rather than later. Hopefully, though, that won’t happen, and the world will get to enjoy them for so many more years to come.