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Red Pandas (Ailurus fulgens)
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Asia Trail
Decisions, decisions. In their Asia Trail habitat, red pandas can snooze on cool rocks or play in the trees, depending on the temperature and their temperament. And you've got choices, too: You can observe the red pandas at ground level on the lower loop, or get a bird's-eye view of them from the upper walkway. But your best bet is to check out these active animals from both angles.

Red panda
On Asia Trail, red pandas can climb on trees or rest on cool rocks. (Jessie Cohen/NZP)

Red pandas live in mid-elevation forests in the Himalayas, so exhibit designers surrounded the trees in their Asia Trail habitat with rugged rock walls for a natural mountainous feel. Two females currently live in the habitat, but in the future, pairs may raise young in nest boxes built into the rocks' craggy recesses. The nest boxes can be cooled or heated as necessary, and tiny cameras mounted inside them will capture the red pandas' behavior so National Zoo scientists can learn more about them.

Since 1972, National Zoo scientists have been studying and breeding red pandas. Now they're working with colleagues in India to reintroduce zoo-born red pandas to the wild. One of these colleagues is Sunita Pradhan, who with her assistants released two of the Darjeeling Zoo's red pandas in Singhalila National Park. See a slideshow narrated by Sunita with beautiful photographs of the release at the Look Station, which is similar to a Viewmaster, on the red panda portion of the upper walkway.


Get to Know Red Pandas

  • There are fewer than 2,500 adult red pandas alive today, and the IUCN lists them as endangered. They are hunted for their beautiful fur and are rapidly losing habitat to human development.
  • Like giant pandas, red pandas have a small, bony projection on each wrist that helps them grip bamboo.
  • Red pandas' red-and-white markings blend in with the red mosses and white lichens of their native habitat in the Himalayas.
  • It gets pretty cold in mountain forests where red pandas live. To stay warm, they cover themselves with their bushy tails, and are so furry that they even have hair on the soles of their feet.
  • Red pandas spend as many as 13 hours a day searching for and eating bamboo. Finicky eaters, they select only the tenderest young bamboo leaves and shoots, and chew them very thoroughly to aid digestion.
  • Scientists working at the National Zoo found that red pandas compensate for the low energy content of their bamboo diet by having extraordinarily low metabolic rates, and expend almost as little energy as sloths.
  • Red pandas communicate with head bobs, tail arching, and vocalizations.

ZooGoer 35(5) 2006. Copyright 2006 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.

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