The Fuzzy Origins of the Giant Panda
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- čas přidán 16. 12. 2019
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How does a bear -- which is a member of the order Carnivora -- evolve into an herbivore? Despite how it looks, nothing about the history of the giant panda is black and white.
Thanks to Ceri Thomas ( / alphynix ) and Fabrizio de Rossi ( / artoffabricious ) for the excellent panda illustrations!
Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: / pbsdigitalstudios
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References: docs.google.com/document/d/1M... - Věda a technologie
So basically, pandas are carnivores but they're too lazy to hunt so they eat oversized grass blades all day and sleep a lot. 🐼
Snorlax anyone.
Seneir Bello
I mean, Snorlax is absolutely based on pandas.
Cintrón Productions and still cute. Jealous??
Well, they live like in a salad bowl. That makes their lives easier lol
They fill up on salad and never get to the steak.
Naps are more important...
“Pandas Are Like Vegan Gym Bros”
Bruh I goootta get me that bambu protein scramble but little olive oil cuz I gotta lose ten by spring brake bruh
BRILLIANT!
... that hurt to read. Either you're a kid or a dumb adult that also cant spell...
...."babu" really dude? 🤦♂️
@@juxie9229
... that hurt to read. Either you're a kid or a dumb adult that also cant spell...
....""babu" really dude? 🤦♂️" really dude? 🤦♂️
@@juxie9229 He's imitating a gym bro. Obviously. Haven't you ever heard of a gym bro?
"You have to try this nuts"
Legos, pandas, and PBS Eons. What a perfect combination.
Why
Lego*
@@J_Caban *Fact
@@gloomylobster111 agreed them is facks!
Dank_Smirk 2nd Channel yay!! i’m not the only one who thinks so! :)
the amount of panda related dad jokes are honestly impressive
and a bit embearissing
@Boco Corwin I see what you did there
Also bamboozling.
But are they really dad jokes? I mean it’s not a black and white issue.
You guys are horrible, just horrible!
"Nothing about the giant panda is black or white. But it is fuzzy"
I see what you did there.
I want a T-shirt that says “pandas: the vegan gym bros”
NO!
I will get it printed
They don't work out they eat and sleep
Vegan buddies 😍
@@seantheguy1391 YES!
Research shows dad jokes and prehistory science go back together thousands of years.
It's unBEARable.
It would be cool to have a timeline with everything discussed on this channel; sometimes it's hard to remember and conceptualize all the timescales you talk about
Chronological order playlist? Love it, would rewatch the series for sure.
@@LoLotov More like having a visual representation of all or most geological timescales when they show those time diagrams
Check out Aron Ra's Systematic Classification of Life.
A poster of the timeline of the evolution of the ancestors of animals? I'd hang something like that on my wall. A book or series of books with a chapter on each family group? I'd love that even more.
Yeah, I'm one of those people whe read the encyclopedia as a kid....before it was online.
@@Dss-bm3rz This a link to the Eons video "A Brief History of Geologic Time" czcams.com/video/rWp5ZpJAIAE/video.html
There is videos showing that Pandas will still occasionally eat carrion and small mammals if given the chance, in accord to their carnivora origins.
Fair enough, but deer also do that. A lot of non-ursine herbivores will snack opportunistically on other animals too.
Most livestock will too.
He did use qualifiers for herbivorous. Virtually all herbivore species will occasionally consume animal matter and even hypercarnivores like cats will sometimes eat plants.
Elizabeth Frantes
The extent to which hummingbirds have evolved to mirror insects is honestly kinda freaky.
They never would have turned to bamboo if Slim Jims grew as abundantly.
Wow, my childhood has returned full circle. Disney's re-releasing everything, Brontosaurus is back, and Pandas are bears once again.
Lmao
Your profile pic matches your comment, nice
but pluto is still not a planet
Unless you were in a coma the last four decades, they were classified bears through DNA tests in the 1980s.
I find it incredibly fascinating how the pandas gradually knew what types of bamboo to eat depending on season....and even more incredible how researchers were able to recognize this pattern
I’m gonna start calling raccoons trash pandas now
Raccoons have been called that for years now.
Cintrón Productions me too!! Hahahahaha
Cintrón Productions The more the merrier, we’re not special for knowing it longer lol
Cintrón Productions we have similar subscriptions I see...
Same. Trash pandas are dope asf.
One other thing about Panda's, they're somehow really good at kung fu.
Yeah as opposed to their brown cousins who are wrestlers 😂
🐻 Bear: so are you a bear?
🐼 Panda: Yes but also No
"It's... complicated bro."
3:01 omg she melted my heart she’s so cute
I feel like lot of the confusion people have with red pandas and giant pandas could be solved if we switched from 'giant panda' to 'panda bear'.
Joan Turmelle Which is kind of ironic considering I’m old enough to remember when people did called them panda bears and they were corrected for doing so LOL.
Or we could use a local name for the red panda. I think that would be cool
@@Brickman1000 wait... we were not calling panda bears panda bears for a while? Why didn't I get the memo? Well... I guess I was right all along, without even realizing that I could be considered wrong.
Andrei Mirt Oh yeah, as they talk about in this video for a long time people were like oh no pandas aren’t bears. But now we know that they are which is awesome! So panda bears!
Not to forget that the red panda was the original panda, named as such several decades before the panda bear was discovered (hence why it's called a 'giant' panda). So it's only fitting that we reserve panda for the red panda only.
I think we just underestimated bamboo
You vagan?
How about an episode on the evolution of the Okapi. Or an episode on ancient giraffes and Giffafoids.
Y E S
Pandas eat different parts of bamboo at different seasons. Sometimes the special bamboo need to be flown out from China
IIRC, zoos which loan giant pandas need to import special varieties of bamboo.
@@PainterVierax That's what the OP said.
I can't help but feel like they're trying to... panda to us.
Quite the opposite, I think they were trying to bamboo-zle us.
I don’t get it
@@luhueychua3468 Paws and think about it. You're not slow per se, they're just difficult to digest.
😂😂😂
I also don't get it
The cutest vegan gym bros ever.
I’ve always wondered how such a selective eater who never likes to breed came to exist!
When you're the only ones partaking, you have that food source all to yourselves.
Probably extremely lucky.
I seen something saying they don’t exist and I’m currently researching
So pandas ARE bears. Everyone else who tells me says otherwise. TIME TO YEET KNOWLEDGE AMONG THEM
Pandas are the bear family's vegans.
rebelpoxy - soi-bears
An odd thing since pandas eat fish if no bamboo is around.
@@joshuakusuma5953 hahaha humans are herbivores
@@WackoMac No. Humans are omnivores. It's why we have canines.
Yes
It's impressive they made it all the way without remarking how cute they are.
Fascinating to learn this. When I was a kid we always called them panda bears then I learned in school they were not really bears and were more closely related to the red panda. Now they're bears again. Could the similarities with red pandas be a case of convergent evolution?
most likely yes
3:05 Its closest living relatives are all other bears, not just the south American speckled bear. Pandas are a sister taxon to all other bears and thus equally related to every other bear.
He's a panda! You're a panda! What are you gonna do, big guy? Sit on me?
its cool PBS eons teaches us things that we wouldn't even think of!its pretty darn cool I say!
Sure, science says pandas only eat bamboo.... but has anyone even TRIED feeding one a Big Mac?
That would prolly give them cancer.
EnGage With Nature GRAMMAR PLEASE.
@@Hat- They have a slow metabolic rate so it'd probs make them queasy for an afternoon. I don't think they'd sleep well
Please do a video on the greatest cats to ever live. Natodomeri lion, American lion, Ngandong tiger, and more.
And the machairodus giganteus or smilodon
That would be awesome
@@radzination8784 nah the American lion is
My cat Chibi.
@@lestatangel Chonker
How about an episode on the relationship between large sauropods and the large theropods that preyed on them. And how there's evidence of these predator/prey relationships in almost every continent:
Ex: Puluxisaurus and Acrocanthosaurus in N.A.
Argentinosaurus and Mapusaurus in S.A.
Paralititan and Carcharodonotosaurus in Africa etc.
Both Allosaurus and Saurophaganax/Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus and Barosaurus in Jurassic North America
Plus, Paluxysaurus is almost certainly Sauroposeidon
@@zooemperor3954 sorry about that. Sometime I forget about the renames.
Pls this
Aww please give us that PBS
And lets also not forget the Sauropodomorphs and the Rauisuchids from the Triassic, because that's where it all began.
I bloody love this channel
Indeed.
The changing parts of the bamboo they eat during the year is very interesting. Would never have thought that was possible.
Only time I didn't skip listening to the ad at the end. LEGOs are cool. Glad to hear they're trying to be more eco friendly
Me when they got the protein part at the end "Whaaaaaaat!!!!". It all makes sense now, it's like they're not even herbivores. Pretty cool.
All proteins come from plants buddy. Where you think the cow gets its protein?
EnGage With Nature you’re kind of right. That’s not how they have protein however.
They just want to make a point that you can get all proteins from a plant-based diet...
Pandas have longer gut for bacteri to conver nitrogen to protein, humans however have shorter gut meaning we cant process plants like cows and pandas
@@criticalsage So how are plants processed in humans and can you give sources for your claims?
Thank you for that episode, There's been a lot of misconceptions about origins of pandas and twenty years ago i remembered I learned that giant panda and bears are not that closely realated and it is a red panda who is its closest family member. I knew the theory has changed but that clears out a lot.
I'm glad that bell is there cause first thing in the morning I see mail on my phone with new PBS Eons minidocument. I didn't even eat and I got to learn something.
also first time watched sponsor's material with such smile :)
You said that pandas' closest living relatives are the spectacled bears of South America, but this isn't true according to the evolutionary tree you showed. They are equally related to all living bears since they are the earliest-diverging branch.
Lego as sponsor? Respect! :)
I love that you guys sponsor things responsibly, thank you for doing that and not just going after easy money
It's important to note that, since both giant pandas AND red pandas can't really digest bamboo terribly well, this implies that being incapable of digesting bamboo well is actually better when eating bamboo. One theory not mentioned in the video is that bamboo is just so nutrient-poor and difficult to digest that better fiber digestion doesn't provide a substantial enough benefit, potentially even becoming detrimental.
Can we please get a video on red pandas all alone on their little branch of the evolutionary tree of life?
Yep, that would be great.
YAS!
Dude, pandas are awesome, but who knew their fossil history was so interesting?
*They practice kung fu. Dad's a duck, and eats dumplings.*
That's all you need to know.
You know what would be a great video idea? If they could do a video on the big 5 mass extinctions (or 6).
And no I’m not talking about the one that is human caused, I’m talking about a newly discovered one that happened during the Permian period.
Okay, so I've looked in the comments, and I haven't seen anyone say this, so: as a Hungarian, I find Miomaci Pannonicum's name super adorable because 'maci' means 'teddy bear' or 'bear cub' in Hungarian so its name means The Hungarian Teddy Bear of the Miocene epoch
this is the first time i'm actually interested in the sponsor product
What bemuses and amuses me is that many animals have a lot of similarities but aren't very closely related. It fascinates me. And, btw, I totally get that spectacled bear being related. I kinda assumed they *were* before this.
Read up on convergent evolution, all will become clear.
So if the first guy, who named the panda was right about it being a bear. Why then hasn't the name been change back to the name he gave it?
Genus classification requires close genetic relationship, usually within a few million years.
Peter Gray Makes sense. Thanks for that valuable information sir.
Steve is the eontologist we all aspire to be
Thank you for all you do, PBS Eons. It's wonderful.
A small issue: You said that the closest living relative of the panda is the spectacled bear, but the diagram contradicts this. It shows that pandas are equally related to spectacled bears and all other bears. I think the diagram is correct. Spectacled bears are more closely related to ursinae than they are to pandas; so spectacled bears and ursinae together are equally and more distantly related to pandas.
I’m really surprised you guys haven’t covered EARS yet! The transition from jaw bone to inner ear bones would make a great vignette for Eons and it also encapsulates some key ideas of evolution-it would be perfect!
👄->👂
Fun Fact: 'maci' is the pet name for 'bear' in Hungarian.
@Elizabeth Frantes i think they mean naming there pet dog, or other animal "bear"
I love that Hungarian has a word for pet muder machines
@Elizabeth Frantes Maybe some of us keep pet bears illegally, but in this case pet name means nickname ('medve' is the actual word for bear, but in children's tales they call them 'maci' or 'mackó')
Elizabeth Frantes Pet name is a nickname. You can have a pet name for something that isn’t a pet. Like my bf calls all small bird birbs, that’s a pet name
That's mainly for something like a teddy bear though, medve is the actual name for a bear
pandas are those people that are trying to switch to plant based meats
justin lagrange - and having zero success
and they chose excellent plant based meats
Iain Mawhinney - there is no such thing as plant meat, meat plant, or peat mlant - wtfever. Hate to burst everybody's imaginary world bubble. Actually I quite enjoy it, but I'm going to be called a racist now which makes about as much sense as Meat Plant...smh it's either meat or its plant. I know... reality sucks for most of you people.
@@lestatangel I'm still gonna call it plant meat. Or maybe I will call it healthier meat. 😅
EnGage With Nature - and I'm going to call your children disadvantaged. With a parent like you it's an absolute fact. UC facts matter, not feelings. Quick, run to your safe space.
I'd love to see you guys deep dive into the relationship between cheetahs, pumas, and American cheetahs. I've done some reading, but there's conflicting stuff out there. You guys always make these difficult, debated subjects digestible.
I really like the puns in these videos! 😂
You know, I think LEGO Should (if not already) make it's products entirely out of fully recycled materials (plastics) and perhaps even set up recycling branch).
Lego has said they'll probably be using fully sustainable materials by 2030
It already does if I'm not mistaken
Lego is recycled every time you take apart whatever you build to build something else. The bricks can last for generations and have the same value.
@@lakrids-pibe most of the time they even go up in value!
if they could they would I reckon. With the patent gone, they are all about everything apart from bricks. Maybe one of the copy companies could do it.
Fun Fact: There was a South American panda living 4-3 million years ago! Well, actually....it wasn't a panda, but a giant raccoon called Chapalmalania, which was pretty much identical in size and shape to the giant panda. If you're wondering how scientists could mistake the panda for an overgrown raccoon, look up this animal, who was, coincidently, originally misidentified as a bear.
The thing that always baffles me about pandas is why are they so silly and seemingly friendly. Is it because they have few to no prey and therefor have evolved a more relaxed nature?
We Chinese call it literally bear cat... I'm even more confused.
Yup we do call it that
God himself could come down here and tell me not to call them trash pandas. I'm still calling them trash pandas.
They are technically semi comparable to Red Pandas, so...
In german we call them wash bears :D waschbär
Man, if you think pandas are weird, just wait until you hear about koalas.
Thinking about it, is an episode about the origins of koalas possible?
An episode on Marsupials would be awesome.
Nicholas Lewis Y e s P l e a s e.
It would be really interesting to compare how the droppings of pandas correlate to those of therizinosaur coprolites given that they represent the two major cases of members of strictly carnivorous groups secondarily evolving a herbivorous lifestyle. I am pretty sure that any parallels or contrasts would provide interesting clues as to the limits in adaptability of tetrapod digestive systems.
Pandas were first scientifically described by Père Armand David and named Ursus Melanoleucus because it was a bear.
Then Alphonse Milne-Edwards came along and argued that, no, it was not a bear and renamed it to Ailuropoda Melanoleuca.
Subsequent genetic analysis has proven Pandas to be bears.
Ergo, Pandas should be reclassified as Ursus Melanoleucus.
"Vegan gym bro" That killed me lol
Never forget that panda bears are still bears and have one of the strongest bites in the world.
@NOOKEY69 Hard!! One of, not the strongest
@NOOKEY69 Hard!! I believe hippos have the strongest bite force out of any animal.
@NOOKEY69 Hard!! Touche, I had to search to make sure. You win
2:39 That diagram would've been a lot more informative if we could see the species names and the branch points at once
Seeing as we're in the Winter season, how about an episode on the evolution of Penguins or Polar Bears?
Menko Monty or the arctic ecosystem in general from the age of the megafauna
Can't believe they got Killian to be in this video
But Killiam is an italian red Panda.
paco ramon I thought he’s a Swedish red panda.
They're also un-bear-ably cute!😁😁
I loved this episode! Thanks for teaching me some evolutionary history in pandas. I love them even more now.
Fascinating! Love this video. So many questions answered...
And perfectly explained, my man 👌🏻👍🏻
Always enjoy your videos. Thank you for all the knowledge you give us! Keep up the good work.
Pandas seem to have painted themselves into an bio-evolutionary corner, such a specific diet.
True, but I also don't think evolution expected humans to come along and destroy everything that took millions of years to build, in mere thousands. Everything is changing so fast, animals can't even get a chance to evolve.
Are they incapable of digesting anything else?
Eddie Junior Evolution didn’t expect anything because it’s not a sentient being
They evolved cuteness, though.
Jerel Wayne
1. My comment was relevant to the conversation, yours was not
2. My punctuation was fine, yours was not.
Sounds like a modern-day Erlikosaurus...?!? This was an especially cool segment, considering that for the past 60 years I've been hearing, "Panda bears aren't bears!" Thanks!
Eons has the best presenters of all the PBS channels.
I'm glad that they're making a comeback after how much money we've put into them. I love pandas but it's hard to see not-cute keystone animals in trouble when the panda gets so much love. So it's really good news that at least it's not in vain. :)
Can you please at some point make an interview with an archaeologist who works with teeth? It seems so unlikely and amazing what you can find out by looking at an animals teeth!
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
This is high quality and excellent. Congratulations ☺
So pandas are like therizinosaurs, followed a strange new route off their original carnivorous ancestory
Panda+Eons=Epic
🌌🌌🌌
How advertiser friendly does one get to get sponsored by Lego...
Talking about how awesome Pandas are.
I think it's weird that nothing was mentioned about how they give birth and raise their young in a pouch like a marsupial.
Congrats on 1 million subs! I hope they are showing these in schools. Everyone on planet Earth that has internet access should watch these.
Justin McBeth Absolutely! 😀😀😀
Pandas are such amazing and adorable animals. I'm glad they're starting to come back after coming so close to extinction. Wiping out these animals is something humanity would never be able to atone for.
Great stuff!
I'd love to learn how aquatic mammals such as seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins and orcas came to be!
An exploration of how the isolation of Antartica shaped its fauna and flora (wait, are there any plants native to Antartica?) would also be very welcome!
You forgot Chapalmalania the Giant Racoon of Pantanal. Looks like a Panda but actually Ovesize Racoon Relative.
I'd love to see an episode on the ongoing debate around the origins of our species, the debate of whether Homo sapiens came out of Africa and displaced all other hominids, Vs. the newer hypothesis that modern human populations are more an admixture of many closely related human sub species. the later theory implying that we should not consider Neanderthals, Denisovians, and presumably others, as a separate species to our own, but more like a sub-species in a greater diversity of homo sapiens as a species. this argument is ongoing as far as i can gather and could drastically change the story of our species. the new theory postulating that our nearest common ancestor with Neanderthals and others, that ancestor being Homo Erectus, Ergastor, or Habilis, diversafied, then reconverged in a "Wallace effect" type scenario, versus a recent African ancestor displacing all other homonids.
THE FUZZY ORIGINS OF CZcams RECOMMENDATIONS!!
watching a video and a panda popped on the screen the same time as I got this in my sub box.
I love your videos...and the historical timeline of earth and her inhabitants....WOW...thank you!
As a kid I used to spend hours on end playing with Lego, ignoring everyone and everything else around me. The bliss of curiosity. Somehow, bamboo eating pandas remind me of how that feels... coincidence?
Therizinosaurs: We did it first!
😂😂
Pandas: We're cuter when doing it tho!
The spectacled bear is the closest living relative of the panda, but so are all other bear species. They're all the same amount of related to the panda.
Since the spectacled bear is the second oldest species, it's considered more closely related to the giant panda than all other individual species, as they've undergone more genetic change. It'd be more accurate to say that the spectacled bear is as closely related to the giant panda as the common ancestor of all ursinae species.
The ignorant flamingo- nope, your not even close. It's no wonder that people consider the flamingos to be an ignorant species.
@@GerikDT Spectacled bears are not the second oldest bears, what you mean is that their lineage is the second most basal. But they're the second most basal group compared to the other bears. Compared to the spectacled bears, the other bears (excluding pandas) are the second most basal group.
Spectacled bears have not undergone more genetic change. That's also not how we define evolutionary relatedness. For that we look at how far back the most recent common ancestor is. The MRCA for the panda and the spectacled bear is just as far back as for the panda and every other bear species. So the spectacled bear is not more closely related to the giant panda than any other bear species is.
One video I’ve been hoping for is a video that goes over the different ways we can determine behaviors from the fossil record
My childhood love for pandas just reappeared. Y'all have no idea how many excited emotions I made as I watched this video. I knew about the unusual bearness of the Giant Panda, but seeing how science has (very recently, may I add) solved many of this silly bear's conundrums, I am so excited to see what else is in store for this fluffy ball of fur!
Love your vids
Other people: Panda jokes
Me: STEVE!
I like this guy. I like how he works in small bits of humor. That and he seems like he knows what hes saying rather than just reading off a teleprompter.
Koalas still win the title of "Most Bear-like Non-bear."