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• Not everyone knows that there are two kinds of pandas. One is the red panda and the other is the giant panda. The best known kind, loved by everyone is the beautiful black-and-white giant panda. The smaller red panda is quite common, but giant pandas are now very rare. Giant pandas are the national animal of China. They are also the emblem of the World Wildlife Fund, an organization that gives money to projects to save rare animals and plants.
• Giant panda used to live in many parts of China. A few lived in the neighboring country of Burma. Scientists guess that only about one thousand giant pandas are now left. They live only in one area of China. Most pandas are found in the province of Sichuan in southwest China, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. The giant pandas live deep in the mountainous bamboo forests.
• Giant pandas were originally meat-eating animals, or carnivores. Pandas are very gentle animals and are not suited to hunting other animals for food. Over the years they have changed their eating habits. They began to eat a bushy plant called bamboo instead. But giant pandas' bodies, which are made for eating meat, cannot digest the bushy plant properly. Because of this, less than one-fifth of the pandas' food intake gives them any nourishment. They have to eat enormous amounts of bamboo to get the vitamins they need.
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