Study says pandas should be meat eaters

A giant panda may look like a vegetarian on the outside, but it definitely looks like a carnivore on the inside.

A genetic analysis of 121 samples of panda poop finds that the community of microbes living inside these animals’ guts is optimized to digest meat. This is despite the fact that giant pandas have been eating bamboo for at least 7 million years and the plant has been the bears’ sole food source for at least 2 million years.

The findings, published Tuesday in the journal mBio, may not bode well for the endangered species. Only about 1,600 giant pandas remain in the forests of northern and central China.

“The peculiar characteristics of its gut microbiota may put it at high risk of extinction,” the study authors wrote.

Pandas eat as much as 28 pounds of bamboo each day, a diet that requires as much as 14 hours of munching.

But the collection of microbes that make their home in the panda gut were found dominated by escherichia/shigella and streptococcus bacteria. That meant that they looked a lot like the communities found in meat eaters, especially black bears, polar bears and spectacled bears.

What was missing were ruminococcaceae and bacteroidetes bacteria, two groups that are good at degrading fiber. These microbes typically help herbivores such as cattle, sheep, horses and rabbits digest their food.