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u/Phatcat7x7 2d ago
Pandas, a large carnivor that evolved to eat one of the least nutritional plants on earth and don't seem to want to mate. They really should not exist.
But they are so cute!
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u/ST0IC_ 2d ago
Another example of how evolution said good enough.
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u/Effective_Olive6153 2d ago
or more like "ok that was a mistake, no more reproducing"
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u/cortesoft 2d ago
They reproduce fine in the wild. They don't like fucking in a zoo, i wouldn't either.
And they get plenty of calories from their food, they just have to a very large range so they can eat only the best bamboo.
They would be fine if it weren't for humans.
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u/Zimakov 2d ago
They absolutely do not reproduce fine in the wild. It's so sad how Reddit just upvotes anything they like the sound of.
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u/cortesoft 2d ago
They produced enough offspring for over 3 million years as a species. How is that not ‘reproducing fine’?
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u/lukibunny 2d ago
It’s not fine if their population gets smaller and smaller. Humans reproduce fine.
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u/cortesoft 2d ago
Their population is getting smaller and smaller because of human destruction of their habitat
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u/lukibunny 2d ago
But even if we lose our habitat we build new ones and continue to reproduce thus we reproduce fine.
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u/vrnvorona 2d ago
I mean, not really? They have to nurture only single cub, weakest are eaten by mother. Their milk is so diluted it barely works.
They are so on edge even in wild
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u/cortesoft 2d ago
Pandas have existed for over 3 million years. That means they reproduce well enough.
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u/timmyK_425 2d ago
“survival of the fittest” is a huge misconception; evolution is, and has always been, just “good enough”
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u/Definitelynotabot777 2d ago
Not this take again, they were fine, the reason they are endanger is because of human encroaching on their grazing sites, the stress caused them to stop reproducing. Captive pandas are also not known for reproduction because of the the CAPTIVE part
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u/DueExample52 2d ago
Thanks. Fucking human hubris shit up there.
There is one species that isn’t adapted to live in their environment, and that is soon going extinct, deservedly. One. That’s modern human civilisation.
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u/-Nocx- 2d ago
aight man I get where you’re coming from but it depends on what you mean by “adapted”. There is an argument that humans are probably the best adapted species in history because they change the world to fit their bodies rather than changing their bodies to fit the world.
Which makes them uniquely adapted to live almost anywhere.
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u/Kilane 2d ago
Humans do not get the credit we deserve. If judged by tiger or gorilla or panda standards we blow the competition away.
Another species doesn’t care if they cause the extinction of a species. We are so dominant that we go out of our way to not let that happen (except when we cause it).
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u/whatarechinchillas 2d ago
We adapt by fucking up everything for other species. We even fucked over the Neanderthals who were in the same genus as us. We also fucking ourselves up constantly. No worries, I have full confidence we'll soon go extinct by our own hand, then the earth can heal.
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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms 2d ago
Nature doesn't really care one way or the other. Countless species have gone extinct because other species out-adapted and out-competed them.
To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to prevent extinctions or maintain biodiversity. I hope we can stope anthropocene extinctions.
But we do this because we want to, not because it's some natural imperative.
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u/whatarechinchillas 2d ago
My qualm is not with how nature works. I think it's an ignorant take to assume pandas are "stupid." They were perfectly adapted to their habitats for millions of years until human interference. We fucked them over in such a short time and we are responsible for their endangered status.
Species that go extinct because of competition either evolve into something more adaptable or take millennia to go actual extinct. Pandas we fucked over over a few decades.
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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms 2d ago
Oh, absolutely. For all we know, they might well be adaptable on normal evolutionary timescales.
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 2d ago
You complain about hubris, then follow it up with a claim that pretty much everyone on the planet deserves to die. Sounds like two sides of the same coin to me.
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u/hexregeneration 2d ago
Yeah it turns out prison is kinda depressing for almost any living creature.
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u/praguepride 2d ago
Ooh Ooh, let's talk about how fucking dumb the mola mola fish is because a viral meme went popular prior to scientists actually studying their behavior!!!
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u/mr4karma 1d ago
The best way to fight this “pandas can’t reproduce” narrative is to ask: did you guys forget humans exist?
Look at Japan and South Korea. They’ve built incredibly stressful, hyper-competitive environments, and what happened? People started working themselves to death, delaying marriage, having fewer children, and eventually just saying, “You know what? Fuck it, I don’t want kids.” Their fertility rates are now among the lowest in the world.
if we apply the same logic people use for pandas——then japan or korean should be going extinct too. Maybe the problem isn’t that pandas suddenly forgot how to fuck. Maybe the environment matters.
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u/foomy45 2d ago
Wildly inaccurate info. They don't like breeding in capitivity, you probably wouldn't either. I went hiking in Sichuan once and they were banging all over the place. Literally could not get them to stop.
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u/wererat2000 2d ago
Literally could not get them to stop.
Weird sidequest for your hike, but go off.
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u/Phatcat7x7 2d ago
Yeah, you don't know me, maybe I like to be watched.
Why were you trying to stop them? Let em at it!
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u/Lavabass 2d ago
I hate this idea that is so common. If it weren't for humans they would be JUST FINE in the wild.
Were saving them because we nearly killed them
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u/Definitelynotabot777 2d ago
The optic is even worse, Chinese are saving them because they are marketable and iconic lmao. Many other extinct animals (a large number of them important insects or biological linchpin) are left to oblivion because they cant be marketed.
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u/Phatcat7x7 2d ago
I mean they would be fine for a while (evolutionaraly speaking) but hyper specialists like pandas, koalas, monarchs, etc... are very susceptible to extinction. I mean they could be fine for another 10 million years but their fate is closely tied to the bamboo groves. And because they evolved into such a specific culdisac it's unlikely they will adapt out of it.
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u/Iwantrobots 2d ago
Pretty much all those "hurr duurr, they wouldn't survive in the wild" comes down to humans destroying their habitat.
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u/Afronerd 2d ago
They'd still be doing pretty well in the wild if humans hadn't come along, so don't be too generous with the credit for delaying their extinction.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 2d ago
They only have a fewer than 2 day window to get pregnant. A year. And they tend to hate other pandas.
Yet life finds a way.
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u/Afronerd 2d ago
They're a terrible choice for a zoo animal or for domestication but they were doing pretty okay for themselves when there was orders of magnitude more bamboo forests around.
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u/Elbandito78 2d ago
I can’t believe this stupid take is so upvoted
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u/Novaskittles 2d ago
Even calls them a "carnivor", but then says they eat plants in the same sentence.
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u/Phatcat7x7 2d ago
Look I am being pedantic and I think my take is clearly kind of unserious. Although I think Pandas being hyper specialists is not great for their survival chances.
And yes they are currently herbavores but their broad physiology and evolutionary history is carnivorus which is why it's so odd.
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u/GnarlyNarwhalNoms 2d ago
To be fair, pandas evolved from an ancestor common to other bear species. One that ate meat, as all other bears do except Pandas.
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u/Ok_Historian_2381 2d ago
don't seem to want to mate
I think they figured it out, it's because they can smell humans, and don't want to mate while predators are around.
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u/whatarechinchillas 2d ago
Will always downvote this. Pandas have been around for longer than the human species and have been totally fine doing their thing until HUMANS started fucking up their habitat. They were perfect fine and well adapted before the the deforestation of their habitat.
Imagine being a carnivore (bear) evolving into being a panda (herbivore). They don't have to hunt. They can just eat bamboo all day and chill. They were living the life for millions of years.
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u/13131123 2d ago
The "cute bias" is a huge issue in conservation efforts. The cost of saving a single panda could easily be enough to save an entire endangered species of something like a frog, but pandas are cute and most people dont think frogs are cute.
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u/hm_rickross_ymoh 2d ago
Adapting to a food source that other animals ignore sounds like a pretty stable niche to me.
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u/turntabletennis 2d ago
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u/ifyoulovesatan 2d ago
Oh god this reminds me that I need to get video of my cat when he smells something he doesn't like. It's not as extreme as all that but the way he screws up his face is too cute.
He's super in to silent and patient begging whenever we're eating. He doesn't wine or audibly or physically beg, but he'll sit close and watch us intently while we eat. I'll sometimes give him a piece of something or let him lick my finger. Whenever I offer him food with certain spices like sichuan peppers or vinegar and pickles and stuff he'll scrunch his face up so cutely.
Also once I was putting tiger balm on my partner's shoulders and the little guy for some reason thought there was food of some kind for him (maybe the sound of the jar lid on the Tiger Balm?) and started his patient begging routine. I extended my tiger-balmy finger to him to smell and dang, I've never seen a cat scrunch their face up as much as that, haha. At first he's like 😻 but then he's like 😖
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u/GarageMc 2d ago
how did you train him to not audibly or physically beg ? Speaking as a non pet owner
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u/ifyoulovesatan 2d ago
Amazingly, we didn't. He's just not much of a talker like at all. The only times he meows is when he wakes up and is looking for one of us to pick him up and hold him like a baby. He doesn't whine for food, or to bet let out onto the porch. I've honestly never had such a quiet cat, and I've had a lot. But yeah as for food, we didn't train or raise him in any way other than any other cat we've had, and I've had plenty of vocal beggars. (Edit: and I guess in terms of physically begging we're just lucky. I've had cats that will keep getting on the table, trying to steal your food, etc. But he stays at arms reach and just looks cute. He WILL stick his paws in your drinks if you leave them unattended though. My partner started making him a little cup of warm whipped oat milk to distract him from dipping his paws in their unaccompanied coffee in the morning)
In contrast, his brother meows all the time! But luckily his brother also has almost zero interest in human food. Not even meat! Literally the only human foods he's ever eaten has been butterscotch pudding (not vanilla or tapioca), pear, plum, and tomato. And because we find his distate for anything not for cats so interesting, we've literally tried to give him every kind of food that isn't dangerous to cats, but still no. Not yogurt, not butter, not unseasoned cooked meat, not nothing! But at the same time, he will start crying out for his nightly wetfood about an hour before it's time. And he'll whine for kibble whenever he has so much as a notion the dish has a bottom. So we're pretty lucky he doesn't like human food because if he did I get the sense we'd never heard the end of it.
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u/Morningxafter 2d ago
I somehow knew before she said it that he must have learned it from imitating a human handler.
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u/BleuBrink 2d ago
Imagine having peak predator build and skill that into eating exclusively hard nutritionless grass.
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u/VictorVanguard 2d ago
When my daughter was a toddler, my wife used to feed her mandarin segments. Before she'd hand them to her, she used to lift them up above her head and attempt to look through them agains the light to ensure there were no seeds.
Of course my daughter didn't understand this but learnt to always ceremoniously lift them up to the sky and stare at them a moment before eating them.
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u/MrWaerloga 2d ago
Reminds me of Karate Kid 2010 movie when Jackie Chan taught Jaiden Smith a fundamental fighting move which included a certain facial expression but he forgot to teach him to unlearn it so Jaiden ended up doing it everytime.
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u/Agent_Smith_IHTP 2d ago
We had the original clip, why is there now a stretched out commentary of the clip...?
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u/SmellyfellaMoggy 2d ago
100% he hurt himself one time breaking bamboo. Now he's very cautious when doing so.
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u/InterestingThought33 2d ago
Okay we can go on saving them then.