🐼🐼🐼It’s National Panda Day🐼🐼🐼

What's not to love about these fun loving balls of fluff , which is why they are one of the most loved animals in the world.Yet, like almost every other animal they face extinction due to climate change causing the bamboo (their main diet) to grow further up the mountains and to man, for spoiling their habitat with farming, roads so shrinking their habitat.

These wonderful creatures have been around for 20 million years, and, despite, general belief, they are a bear, belonging to the Ursidae Bears, but do have a lot in common with Racoons. Their diet is mainly bamboo, alth0ugh they evolved as meat eaters, they are vegetarian an need to eat a lot of foliage to get enough energy and nutrients to survive.

There are only 2-3 thousand left in the wild an a few hundred in captivity so these animals need help to survive and not become extinct, it would be an awful loss if they did. Fortunately they were moved to the vulnerable list in 2016 but more work is needed to make them safe.

They do not have a great reproduction record as the female is only fertile 2-3 day a year, and there is very little success in captivity in breeding them, although work is always in progress on this subject. Every cub is precious.

To celebrate today you could learn more about these fantastic animals or you could adopt one, through WWF or Pandas Internations. Y0u can also buy panda souvenirs from these places and the money helps towards saving these wonderful funny and gorgeous creatures. The stuffed toys are brilliant and will brighten up any office or room.