Receive email alerts about issues that are important to UC and contact your legislators to ensure the university remains a hub of opportunity, excellence, and innovation. The scientists who uncovered why zebras have black-and-white stripes to repel biting flies , took the coloration question to giant pandas in a study published this week in the journal Behavioral Ecology. Then they tried to match the darkness of these regions to various ecological and behavioral variables to determine their function.
Through these comparisons, the study found that most of the panda — its face, neck, belly, rump — is white to help it hide in snowy habitats. The arms and legs are black, helping it to hide in shade. Long Hui, a giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca at the Vienna Zoo. A new study published by a collaboration between researchers from the University of California, Davis and the California State University, Long Beach , scored and compared fur coloration in thousands of photographs of bears and other terrestrial carnivores.
Based upon this analysis, the research team reports that the giant panda's unique black-and-white markings have two functions: camouflage and communication. The panda's white body markings help it hide in snow, whilst its black body markings help it hide in shade. The panda's distinctive facial markings are used to communicate with other pandas.
As coloration and color pattern goes, most mammals are drab brownish or greyish to match their background, making them really quite boring to look at -- with the exception of a few remarkable creatures, such as zebras and giant pandas, which possess sharply contrasting black-and-white color patterns.
The rarity and stunning noticeability of such coloration has long fascinated scientists: why did such distinctive color patterns evolve and what is their functional significance?
Last year, a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis , discovered that zebras stripes' polarize light and thereby reduce biting flies' ability to home in on these animals for a meal ref. This year, the zebra research team collaborated with colleagues at the California State University, Long Beach , to investigate the evolutionary reason for giant pandas' unique color pattern.
Ecologically speaking, giant pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleuca which translates to "black and white cat-foot" , are a mere shadow of what they once were. They are now are restricted to a highly fragmented geographic range between — meters feet in elevation in south-central China, but historically, they occupied a much larger and more continuous range throughout most of southern and eastern China.
Further, panda fossils indicate they once lived as far south as northern Myanmar and northern Viet Nam and northward nearly to Beijing. Although their closest relatives are carnivores, pandas are specialised on a diet of low-quality bamboo. With the exception of mothers with cubs, adult pandas are solitary animals and are known to roam widely through low- and mid-elevation forests at various times of the year.
Despite their large body size -- adult pandas weigh between 86 and kilograms pounds -- they are a menu item for variety of animals, ranging from the comparatively small dhole, Cuon alpinus , a native Asian wild canid, to large predators such as leopards, Panthera pardus , Asiatic black bears, Ursus thibetanus , and brown bears Ursus arctos , and formerly, wolves, Canis lupus , and tigers, Panthera tigris.
But pandas' strange color pattern has been the feature that has most fascinated people. So it has to be active year-round, traveling across long distances and habitat types that range from snowy mountains to tropical forests.
The markings on its head, however, are not used to hide from predators, but rather to communicate. Dark ears may help convey a sense of ferocity, a warning to predators. Their dark eye patches may help them recognize each other or signal aggression toward panda competitors. Materials provided by University of California - Davis. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Deconstructing a Giant Panda "Understanding why the giant panda has such striking coloration has been a long-standing problem in biology that has been difficult to tackle because virtually no other mammal has this appearance, making analogies difficult," said lead author Tim Caro, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology.
Hiding in Snow or Forest Through these comparisons, the study found that most of the panda -- its face, neck, belly, rump -- is white to help it hide in snowy habitats. Why is the giant panda black and white? Behavioral Ecology , ; DOI:
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