Status
Habitat
Range
Group
Not a panda, not a raccoon — the sole survivor of its own family.
Ailuridae contains one living species. Everything else in the family is fossil, which makes the red panda less a relative of anything alive than a remainder. Like the giant panda it evolved a false thumb — an extended wrist bone used to grip stems — an answer arrived at twice, independently, by two unrelated carnivores facing the same plant.
The eastern Himalaya and the hills of Sichuan and Yunnan hold what is left, in forest that is being thinned for fuelwood and grazing. Two pressures compound the habitat loss: a persistent trade in skins and live animals, and canine distemper carried by herding and village dogs into forest where the pandas live at low density.
The open shelf
More frames of the red panda
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, eighteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.
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Developing the next eighteen…
