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
Ling Ling (giant panda) Ling Ling (giant panda) Ling Ling was born at the Beijing Zoo in Beijing, China, on September 5, 1985. He was given to Japan and the Ueno Zoo in November 1992 by China in exchange for a panda which had been born in Japan. The 1992 panda exchange, between China and Japan, which is often called Panda diplomacy, took place to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of bilateral Sino-Japanese relations in 1972. He remained one of the Ueno Zoo's most popular attractions for over 15 years. The Ueno Zoo paired Ling Ling with a female panda named Tong