The term "panda" generally refers to the giant panda--the black and white animal sometimes mistaken for part of the bear family. There are also red pandas, which are small, tree-dwelling mammals. Today, there are approximately 3,000 giant pandas alive in the wild but estimates vary and some put the number as low as 1,000. However, there are an additional 200 pandas living in captivity in China through its captive breeding programs and approximately 20 living in zoos in other countries around the globe.
Historically, pandas ranged throughout southern and eastern China. However, due to human encroachment, the current habitat for wild pandas and their young has been reduced to less than two dozen heavily forested areas in the mountains of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. The Minshan Mountains, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, has the largest concentration of wild pandas, accounting for 45 percent of the remaining population.
Pandas are solitary animals in the wild, living alone and only coming together to mate once a year. Mothers generally only give birth to one or two live baby pandas. If two are born, the mother will raise one and abandon the other. Baby pandas share their mothers' habitat for the first 18 months of their lives before they go off to live by themselves. They begin to breed around five years of age.
One of the reasons that pandas are endangered is the high infant mortality rate. Baby pandas live in a dangerous world. Eagles, leopards and roaming packs of wild dogs all hunt baby pandas in the wild. Adult animals are less susceptible to predation because of their size.
Pandas eat very little other than bamboo. They can only live where these plants grow, which means pandas have always had a limited habitat range in Asia. However, human use has reduced their habitat even further, as activities like farming and logging eliminate bamboo forests. Although the Chinese government has set aside areas of panda habitat as protected reserves, these areas are isolated and limited for food resources and mating becomes more difficult.