Giant panda to digest cellulose is ascribed to the microbes in its gut. Pandas are born with sterile intestines and require bacteria obtained from their mother's feces to digest vegetation. The giant panda is a "highly specialized" animal with "unique adaptations", and has lived in bamboo forests for millions of years. The average giant panda eats as much as 9 to 14 kg (20 to 30 lb) of bamboo shoots a day to compensate for the limited energy content of its diet. Ingestion of such a large quantity of material is possible because of the rapid passage of large amounts of indigestible
Xin Xin (giant panda) Zoo hours. Xin Xin is artificially inseminated annually with sperm from Chinese panda Ling-Ling as part of a continuing effort to breed pandas in Mexico. Mexico's Chapultepec Zoo has had one of the most successful panda-breeding programs outside of China, with a total of eight giant pandas conceived in the zoo since the first pandas arrived in Mexico in 1975. This has been attributed by some to the Zoo's 7300 ft. altitude, similar to the pandas' native habitat in Sichuan, China. Xin Xin is also the name of a panda which was born in China on 6 August 2005. Xin