### PRELIM INARY STUDY ON FOOD SELECTION AND FEEDING STRATEGY OF RED PANDAS

WEI Fuwen, WANG Wei, ZHOU Ang, HU Jinchu, WEI Yi

• Online:2006-07-29 Published:2008-07-07

### 小熊猫对食物的选择和觅食对策的初步研究

1. 四川师范学院珍稀动植物研究所，南充

Abstract: Red panda's feeding strategy and bamboo biomass were studied in the Mabian Dafengding Natural Reserve in order to understand better how this herbivorous carnivore to adapt the special food—bamboo leaves．Among the three bamboo species．red panda prefers leaves and shoots of Qiongzhuea macrophylla to those of Bashania glauca，because the nutritive quality of the former is better than that of the latter．Pandas never feed on Chimonobambusa pachstachys due to the worst nutritive quality among the three bamboo species．Besides，the red panda also likes to select new leaves on the one or two years old stems．Daily energy requirement of a red panda is estimated 3 626.443 7 kJ， annual requirement 1.323 7×10 6kJ．Leaves of Qiongzhuea macrophylla per square meter can supply 2 850.09 kJ digestible energy．If a red panda only uses 1% of the total energy supplied by leaves per square meter，only 0.046 5 km2 bamboo leaves can meet the annual energy requirement of a red panda．