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
Giant panda respiratory disease. It was found that the cause of death was toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by "Toxoplasma gondii" and infecting most warm-blooded animals, including humans. The giant panda genome was sequenced in 2009 using Illumina dye sequencing. Its genome contains 20 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivoran, the giant panda's diet is primarily herbivorous, consisting almost exclusively of bamboo. However, the giant panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore, as well as carnivore-specific genes, and thus derives little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. Its ability