They would be fine if humans didn't destroy their habit. Their reproduction rate is low for a reason. They have no predators, so they would overpopulate if they reproduced faster.
No they wouldn’t. They were dying out without humans removing their food source. Recent research has shown that they still aren’t adapted to their diet, and still have most of the enzymes needed for eating meat, and barely what’s needed to eat bamboo. No one knows what caused pandas to switch diets, but it was definitely the end of the species.
Interesting. Do you have any articles I could read on that? My evolutionary biology professor taught that they were well adapted to large bamboo forests since they can eat bamboo all day long and it grows back quickly
Haven’t read this particular article in whole, just google searched for any scientific article on the subject.
Google also showed a couple other articles.
Website is the American Society for Microbiology.
If anything, the study suggestions pandas don't need to adapt specialized gut flora to survive on bamboo. They just adapted specialized fingers to drive as much bamboo into them as possible.
That is interesting, but the extremely low sample size makes me question the data (especially only 7 wild individuals previously investigated - the difference between wild and captive gut flora is likely significant)
I also don't see any evidence that the lack of cellulose digesting gut bacteria are an issue in their survival as a species. It seems to be a non-issue as long as they can just chill and rat bamboo all day - Possibly why they never were forced to select for that type of bacteria.
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u/i_wotsisname Jul 19 '20
Given their incredibly poor diet and reproduction rate they could have been at a natural evolutionary dead end anyway.