Pandas live only in the mountainy forests of the Sichuan area. They are mostly active around dawn and dusk, and have never been huge in number.
They do not live in the traditional Chinese heartland, Sichuan didn’t join China until about 200BC, and remained a hinterland up into the modern day.
Lack of accessibility, being on the periphery of China, and difficulty to encounter will all have contributed.
“Mo” (貘) is the modern Chinese word for tapir, and the South East Asian Tapir which traditionally had range into Southern China is also a black and white, small number, hard to encounter forest animal that lives on the periphery of China.
Dragons aren’t even real and they have a prominent spot in Chinese history
Other gods and deities aren’t real either. It’s not like they would have imagined a strangely colored bamboo-eating bear they never encountered just because they live nearby
China had two big black and white animals: pandas and tapirs, and the people writing the books weren’t out in the jungle, they were buying dead skins from dealers who hadn’t seen it alive either. Mo started out as a more accurate panda sighting and then gradually turned into a chimera with a tapir nose and panda claws and magical hydrophobic fur like a tapir and eats metal like an exaggerated panda. And then it got even more tapir-like when Europeans found tapirs first and declared them the basis of the Mo.
Along with the other things here, it took until 1869 for someone to come up with a specific “panda” taxonomy. Before that there were a number of different animals that all got grouped together, some of which looked nothing alike when studied up close, but were experienced in similar ways when moving through wilderness areas.
Kind of like dragons.
Why no year of the Panda?
thier diet keeps thier population low, and thier calorie intake is more similar to a grey wolves. wild brown bears, polar bears, black bears can eat alot more variety of foods.
not an expert on animals at all, let alone panda’s specifically, but I’d imagine it’s horrific evolutionary path, likely had them at very low numbers for most of their history. Hell it wouldn’t suprise me if panda’s were the equivelant of like pugs are to dogs. Some crazy group selective bread them because they thought it was cute… it got out enough to survive, but just barely survive, and lives now due to humans trying to protect these things that can’t even be motivated to reproduce.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/1/4/2925562
The problem pandas have is people, not themselves.
It is commonly argued that giant pandas are an evolutionary cul-de-sac because of their specialized bamboo diet, phylogenetic changes in body size, small population, low genetic diversity, and low reproductive rate. This notion is incorrect, arose from a poor understanding or appreciation of giant panda biology, and is in need of correction. In this review, we summarize research across morphology, ecology, and genetics to dispel the idea, once and for all, that giant pandas are evolutionary dead-end. The latest and most advanced research shows that giant pandas are successful animals highly adapted to a specialized bamboo diet via morphological, ecological, and genetic adaptations and coadaptation of gut microbiota. We also debunk misconceptions around population size, population growth rate, and genetic variation. During their evolutionary history spanning 8 My, giant pandas have survived diet specialization, massive bamboo flowering and die off, and rapid climate oscillations. Now, they are suffering from enormous human interference.
It’s because there was a fuck ton of bamboo and not a lot of things that could eat it.
and bamboo isnt super calorie dense or super nutritious. they are more akin to koalas.
So like picture a bear
Yeah okay one of the most successful and impressive biological families go on
But it eats this weed that’s like everywhere that nothing else can eat
Wouldn’t that like, over populate and dominate the world?
Weirdly? Only on paper.
I guess that stands for “eight million years” in case anyone else is wondering.
Your Mo evolved into Panda!
