Why do panda bears have fangs like carnivores when all they eat is bamboo?


I was wondering if their carnivor-like teeth wouldn’t wear because of eating all that bamboo.
Wouldn’t it be easier for them to have the same teeth as for example rodents?

In: Biology

Their most recent relatives, by a quick look, are carnivores. They have much the same things to be carnivores. They are herbivores by action, and will take a long time to reflect that by physical pieces.

They used to be carnivores. Depending on your definition, they still are. They’re in the order *Carnivora* and the family *Ursidae*. Their closest living relatives are black bears and brown bears. Pandas are the only species in their subfamily, having split off from the subfamily *Ursinae* (which includes black, brown, and polar bears) a long time ago. Nonetheless, they are true bears.

They just haven’t had enough time or evolutionary pressure to lose their canine teeth.

Eating bamboo was likely the result of loss of prey species millions of years ago and an empty niche for a large animal eating plentiful bamboo. So, they moved to the mountains and filled that niche. Pandas also lack other traits common with herbivores like multiple stomachs and a long intestinal tract to break down plant matter. That’s ok because the inside of bamboo is *relatively* easy to digest (still harder than meat), and they just eat a **ton** of bamboo to make up for their inefficiency at extracting what little nutritional value exists in bamboo.

They are actually omnivores and will occasionally eat rodents or scavenged carcasses.

They just prefer bamboo.

Because they used to eat meat, they moved away from the coastline and up into the more hilly areas possibly away from humans but there was little for them to eat except bamboo which now makes up the majority of their diet. https://youtu.be/EuJU5xFZIvM

Did this question stem from the popular post on r/aww today?

This is why America is doomed. The lack of education. ‘Fangs’ does not equal carnivore. If stayed in school you would know that.

Fangs are really good at tearing vegetation apart. Most primates have fangs. Gets into a juicy piece of fruit easily.

Was randomly scrolling and saw the answer to this 2 tiles up.