The Asian black bear is a large animal with a body length of 150- 170cm and a body weight of 150kg. Big ears, small eyes, short and pointed mouth. The coat is black, bright and long, with V-shaped white spots on the chest. The mat is thicker. Habitat in mountain forests, mostly distributed in China, from northeast to south China. He has more activities during the day, is good at climbing trees, swimming and walking upright, and has a keen sense of smell and hearing. They are omnivorous and eat fruits, seeds, insects and small mammals.
Ailurusfulgens is round like a cat, with a body length of 40-65cm, a tail length of 40cm and a weight of about 5kg. With long reddish-brown hair. Eyes, cheeks, corners of the mouth and ears, and even beards are all white, with a furry tail and nine brown and white rings. The shape of a panda, with a cat face and a bear body, looks like a cat, a bear and a bear, with a colorful ring on its thick tail. It lives in the subalpine jungle at an altitude of two or three kilometers in the southwest of China. Usually only a small group of activities are formed.
China Giant Panda
Pandas are neither bears nor cats, and they are not the same kind of red pandas. "Panda" is a proper noun, which has a unique meaning because of its unique position in animal taxonomy. In terms of biological characteristics, pandas are carnivorous like bears, cats and tigers, but pandas have changed from carnivorous to herbivorous and differentiated into an independent branch in the process of evolution. Giant pandas are not only colorful, but also unique in image, charming in appearance, gentle in temperament and funny in action. Due to the scarcity of pandas, this unique animal in China is even more precious and world-famous.
During the geological history hundreds of thousands of years ago, pandas were in their heyday. It is widely distributed in the eastern half of China and the southern and northern parts of Myanmar. It is a representative species of animals in southern China in the Middle Pleistocene, and the animals later became extinct. Only the panda has survived so far, basically maintaining its original characteristics, so it is called a "living fossil". But now there are less than 65,438+0,000 giant pandas distributed in the south slope of Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province, China, the foothills of Minshan Mountain in the south edge of Gansu Province, subalpine coniferous forests, arrow bamboo and mixed coniferous and broadleaved forests in Minshan Mountain, Qiongxia Mountain, Balang Mountain, Daxiangling Mountain and Liangshan Mountain in Sichuan Province.
The growth and reproduction of pandas are very special. They are obviously selective to their spouses, so it is difficult to pair up. The average life span of wild giant pandas is about 15 years, and the female reproductive period is about 5-7 years. They can give birth to three or four babies at most, often one baby. Even if they give birth to two babies in the wild, the mother panda can only give birth to one baby. From the hardship of panda birth and the fragility of young life, it can be seen that giant pandas are a very fragile population, and arrow bamboo will periodically bloom and die in large areas. It will take many years to restore the original appearance and grow rich arrowheads for pandas to eat, which has seriously affected the development of panda population.
Manmade threat
Bears are mostly gentle and shy, afraid of contact with humans, although adult bears sometimes fiercely protect their cubs, nests and food. But human beings pose a great threat to them. For example, due to continuous deforestation, from 1950s to 1990s, in just 40 years, the giant panda's habitat was swallowed by 4/5. This has caused great difficulties for the survival of giant pandas and is the direct cause of the decrease in the number of giant pandas in nature.
Due to habitat loss and hunting, some areas where bears once lived have disappeared. Some people kill within the legal scope, some people illegally hunt bear skins to make blankets and trophies, or use bear paws as a game market and bear gall as a Chinese medicine market.
Yang Xiong farm
In 1980s, China established a bear farm to extract their bile to meet the market demand. Employees insert an iron pipe into the bear, which makes it often painful and susceptible to germs. A domestic bear milks twice a day. Their bile is shipped all over the world. On the farm, bears are kept in small cages. They fidgeted in the cage, showing the psychological pressure brought by years of imprisonment. These bears can only live for 4 to 10 years, while wild bears can live for 30 years. The purpose of establishing a bear farm is to protect wild bears, but most of these bears are captured from the wild, and some people still poach bears living in the wild to get bear gall. There are about 7,000 domestic bears on the farm, while there are only more than 30,000 wild bears in China.
Illegal trade and consumers
The biggest market demand is bear bile. A bear gall can usually sell for thousands of dollars. In countries where bear bile is widely used, such as South Korea, bears have all been killed. Bear bile is usually used to treat diseases such as liver dysfunction. At the same time, it is often used as a tonic. Asian bear gall is more precious because it is rare. But the entrails of other bears are also bought and sold. In North America and Russia, you can often see dead bear bodies without internal organs and palms. The tools used by poachers to kill bears are bows and arrows, guns and hounds. The bear was orphaned by the killing of its parents. If they are not rescued, they will die of fever or hunger.
substitute
In fact, there are many new products that can replace bear bile in traditional Chinese medicine preparations. Bear bile is mainly used to treat red eyes, sore throat and hemorrhoids caused by liver fire. There are more than 54 kinds of herbs that can be replaced, and they are cheaper. Among them, there is a very effective drug called UDCA. It can be mass-produced and the price is very cheap. Animal protectors have repeatedly called for the use of these substitutes and immediately banned the sale of bear products. Otherwise, Asian bears will soon disappear, and the situation of stealing bears in other areas will get worse.
Protection project
Thailand
Although Thai laws strictly prohibit the sale of sun bears and Atlanta black bears, the sale of bears is still very active in the catering industry. Tourists from all over the world, especially Koreans, like to eat bears in Thailand. The price of a bear's paw soup is as high as $65,438+0,400. Once the Thai government found such transactions, it immediately confiscated them. Sometimes confiscated bears and bear products have no place to put them. 1July 1996, they confiscated only 30 live bears from a restaurant.
The Royal Ministry of Forestry of Thailand and the World Animal Protection Organization have established a bear sanctuary in Thailand, allowing bears to live in nature and enjoy their natural life. There is also an education center to let people know more about bears.
China
Due to the special scientific value of pandas, since 1963, the government of China has established 13 panda nature reserves in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Hunting is also prohibited outside the reserve, and various measures have been taken. For example, since 1983, arrow bamboo bloomed in Qionglai mountain area, Sichuan Province, so measures were taken to transfer the giant pandas lacking food in time, feed them and conduct field patrol supervision. This work has continued until now. In addition, zoos with pandas are trying to increase panda breeding. From 1963, Beijing Zoo successfully bred giant pandas under feeding conditions, and by 1983, it successfully bred more than ten giant pandas. 1978 was successfully propagated by artificial insemination for the first time, and by 1982, 6 animals could survive. By May 1985, three pandas had successfully mated in foreign zoos.