Red red panda and elephantine pandas have more in vulgar than simply being equally adorable and include on theIUCN Red List . They both eat bamboo and experience in the same habitats . How do they coexist without competing over the same imagination ? The mystery might be obliterate in their skulls .
Despite their English language labels , red pandas(Ailurus fulgens ) andgiant pandas(Ailuropoda melanoleuca ) are n’t very closely associate , being separated by some40 million yearsof development . Red pandas are more closely related to to the skunks and raccoon you might encounter in your own backyard than the elephantine pandas with whom they share habitats in southerly China . The giant panda , on the other hand , is a much larger bear . Both metal money have become adapted to a dieting mainly dwell of the same species of bamboo , something fairly unique amongCarnivorans . In a new sketch published in Biology Letters , researchers set out to determine how the two mintage can both rely on the same food for thought sources in the same places .
What ’s puzzling according to Z. Jack Tseng , a postdoctoral colleague at the American Museum of Natural History ’s Division of Paleontology who start the sketch , is that a fundamental dogma of bionomics holds that if two mintage utilize the same resources , they ca n’t live in the same space , because there would be too much contender .
But a close look reveals that they ’re actually eating different role of the bamboo . Red pandas prefer leaves and fruit , while giant pandas Edvard Munch on trunks and base . It turns out that those preference are reflected in their haggard build .
Skulls of each coinage were CT - scanned and reconstructed in three attribute . Those model were then used by the research worker to simulate dissimilar forms of biting and chewing . They find out that red panda skulls were better and distributing the stress of chewing than giant panda skulls . But the giant panda compensates by have a stronger skull that can withstand the impact of repeated , saturated , localize violence .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7sKhJHI4Ag
At first glance , the two skull in the TV above are indistinguishable . The only apparent difference of opinion is the sizing of the mintage , not the shape of the skull . But the biting simulations reveal that the red panda ’s skull endures much more stress than the elephantine panda ’s does . The vividness stand for emphasis magnitude , drab representing the skull and jaw at rest , and red representing areas of stress during the bite event at the right - side canid tooth .
“ The skull of [ the gargantuan panda ] is more capable of maintain high-pitched peak forces to break bamboo trunks and stem , and to resist the strain generate , during short and distinct periods of time , ” the investigator save . By demarcation , the red lesser panda ’s skull “ is better able-bodied to resist fatigue as a result of invariant mastication applying submaximal military unit over protracted periods of time by distributing stress more evenly . ”
These differences explain how the two species which , on the surface , should n’t be able to coexist , can get along just fine . “ This enquiry contributes to the body of work showing how the pandas Centennial State - live , ” Tseng said in an official statement . “ We ’ve found that fundamentally , based on the body structure of their skull , they can not eat the same things . ” Rather than keep to their own habitats or evolve to eat dissimilar foods , the two species found an engineering solution to their trouble , allowing them to experience together in the same timber .
Figueirido B. , Tseng Z.J. , Serrano - Alarcon F.J. , Martin - Serra A. & Pastor J.F. ( 2014 ) . Three - dimensional estimator simulations of feeding behaviour in red and giant lesser panda relate skull biomechanics with dietary ecological niche partitioning , Biology Letters , 10 ( 4 ) 20140196 - 20140196 . DOI:10.1098 / rsbl.2014.0196
image : Red panda viaWikimedia Commons / Jar0d ; giant panda viaWikimedia Commons / Fernando Revilla .
AnimalsbiomechanicsEvolutionpandaScienceZoology
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