--- title: Panda Poop Suggests They Shouldn’t Eat Their Favorite Food of Bamboo description: Giant Pandas are not only reliant on a highly specialized diet of bamboo; new research suggests they are not evolved eat their favorite grub canonical: https://time.com/3890318/giant-pandas-china-digestion-extinction-bamboo/ author: Kevin McSpadden article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-20T06:56:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:12.605Z article:section: Science og:title: Panda Poop Suggests They Shouldn't Eat Their Favorite Food og:description: After 14 hours of eating bamboo, only 17% is digested. og:url: https://time.com/3890318/giant-pandas-china-digestion-extinction-bamboo/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt931464f80b6edb0b/698850e906f2c16b8433a411/panda-bamboo-digestion.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5022 og:image:height: 2825 og:image:alt: A photo taken on April 1, 2014 shows the giant panda Hao Hao eating bamboo at Pairi Daiza animal park in Brugelette, Belgium. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Panda Poop Suggests They Shouldn't Eat Their Favorite Food twitter:description: After 14 hours of eating bamboo, only 17% is digested. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt931464f80b6edb0b/698850e906f2c16b8433a411/panda-bamboo-digestion.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Panda Poop Suggests They Shouldn't Eat Their Favorite Food of Bamboo > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life [Watch (HLS stream): Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7mURxfr4.m3u8) (4:03)  _Published 2014-03-12. Conservationists and scientists have a saying, "extinction is forever." But soon biologists will clone long-gone animals in the hope to redefine that axiom to "DE-extinction is forever."_ by [Kevin McSpadden](https://time.com/author/kevin-mcspadden/) ## Kevin McSpadden May 20, 2015 6:56 AM UTC  A photo taken on April 1, 2014 shows the giant panda Hao Hao eating bamboo at Pairi Daiza animal park in Brugelette, Belgium. A photo taken on April 1, 2014 shows the giant panda Hao Hao eating bamboo at Pairi Daiza animal park in Brugelette, Belgium. Virginie Lefour—AFP/Getty Images by [Kevin McSpadden](https://time.com/author/kevin-mcspadden/) ## Kevin McSpadden May 20, 2015 6:56 AM UTC Giant pandas may be reliant on a highly specialized diet of bamboo, but [new research](https://www.asm.org/index.php/asm-newsroom2/press-releases/92-news-room/press-releases/93522-giant-panda-gut-bacteria-can-t-efficiently-digest-bamboo) suggests they are not actually very good at digesting their favorite meal. Scientists in China discovered that, unlike most herbivores, a panda’s gut bacteria has not evolved to match its diet and remains more akin its omnivorous bear cousins. The team took 121 fecal samples from 45 giant pandas — 24 adults, 16 juveniles and five cubs — and compared these with data from a previous study, which included seven wild pandas. Both studies indicated that the bears do not have plant-degrading bacteria like Ruminococcaceae and Bacteroides. “This result is unexpected and quite interesting, because it implies the giant panda’s gut microbiota may not have well adapted to its unique diet, and places pandas at an evolutionary dilemma,” said Xiaoyan Pang, a co-author of the study in a press release. The scientists also discovered that gut bacteria in late Autumn is quite different from spring and summer — which they hypothesize may be a result of the lack of bamboo shoots in the fall. Pandas spend up to 14 hours per day consuming bamboo but only digest about 17% of their meal. China’s most famous animal evolved from a species that ate both meat and plants and began to consume almost exclusively bamboo around 2 million years ago. ## Transcript [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] My name is Stuart Brand and I was trained as an ecologist. Conservation is about to take a turn because the technology was gonna allow us to use the DNA that's in the museum specimens and fossils to bring back extinct species [ MUSIC ] The passenger pigeon was around for 6 million years. And people remembered how amazing it was that these animals darkened the sky for hours at a time. There's these stories about these giant flocks blocking out the sun. And their wings sounding louder than thunder. We developed the techniques to hunt and net these birds and basically killed them all. And then it was really gone. When I was growing up, my mother said when the last one died in 1914 it broke America's heart. It was one of the prideful things that America had to show the world, and it was gone. This book. This is essentially the bible of passenger pigeon. I am currently the lead researcher for the deextinction project to bring the extinct passenger pigeon back to life. When I say, oh, we'll bring back a passenger pigeon, everyone goes, oh, my god, that's like Jurassic Park. And no, no, it's not. Not at all. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before. Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. I don't think a pigeon is going to, you know, pluck lawyers off of toilets. No. [ SOUND ]. Aah! [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So how we're actually going to go about deextinction. Every organism has a unique code in their genes. This one would be good I think. So these are actual DNA codes. From a chunk of a passenger pigeon foot. Now, if you can get DNA, then we can actually make it into a living cell. We're going to sequence its whole genome. We're gonna build from scratch the code that is a passenger pigeon, one gene at a time. Compare it to its closest relative. [ MUSIC ] Then we're gonna introduce DNA into the living cell of a band- tailed pigeon. And when you introduce an extinct animal's egg cell into a new mother, then you've changed the game. [ MUSIC ] Which has been done. The extinct Iranian Ibex was successfully cloned. That was the first deextinction. In this particular case, the animal only lived about ten minutes, but it was a proof of concept, and with further efforts, we hope, followed by everything from the passenger pigeon to the Tasmanian tiger. It's one of the most famous human- caused extinctions in the world. Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger, died in 1936. It was our direct activity that caused that extinction. For me, biotech is the future of conservation because our meddling is not unnatural. It is what species do. One of the things that gotten used to is the horrifying realization that extinction is forever. 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