Xinhua News Agency, Xi'an, November 27th (Reporter Fu Ruixia) Although giant pandas feed on bamboo, they sometimes eat meat for "tooth beating ceremony."

Recently, the Foping National Nature Reserve Administration of Shaanxi carried out a survey of the survival status of the giant panda population. Ranger Li Shuipi and others witnessed a giant panda gnawing on the bones of a takin and took precious images.

  "When we found it, it was less than 50 meters away. There is no bamboo forest on this large mountain slope. What can it eat? It tastes so delicious? It turns out that it is holding a bone that is more than a foot long and eating it." Li Shuiping told reporters, "It ate for about 10 minutes, then dropped its bones, walked slowly into the woods on the hillside, and climbed up a big tree."

The giant panda is eating takin bones.

(Photo courtesy of Shaanxi Foping National Nature Reserve Administration)

  Li Shuipi and others also found several animal bones at the scene.

The next morning, the staff collected a special panda feces sample nearby.

Compared with the common panda feces, the color of these clusters of feces is gray and white, like a spindle-shaped lime stick.

  It is reported that this is the second image of a giant panda eating meat in the Foping National Nature Reserve.

Previously, when the staff analyzed the panda feces, they had also found incompletely digested animal remains and hair in some feces samples.

  In the long evolutionary process, giant pandas have changed their diets to adapt to changes in climate and habitat environment in geological history and eat bamboo, but the structure of their digestive system still retains the characteristics of their carnivorous ancestors.

  Li Sheng, a researcher at Peking University and a member of the Bear Expert Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), believes: "In many areas such as Qinling, Minshan, Qionglai Mountain, there have been studies that have recorded that wild giant pandas occasionally "give teeth sacrifices". It is feeding on the remains of animals. What role and significance this behavior and supplementation of animal food have for wild pandas requires further research."