To learn more about the social life of pandas, researchers have attached GPS collars on five pandas from the wild from 2010 to 2012.
Michigan State University researchers have followed these pandas that include three female adults called Mei Mei, Pan Pan, and Zhong Zhong with one young female named Long Long and a male panda called Chuan Chuan.
China has been very protective of their pandas as they are now considered as endangered where they had previously banned GPS collar use for more than a decade. However, the team from MSU were able to capture and place collars around them in order to track the pandas and observe their interactions in their home in Wolong Nature Reserve in southwestern China.
According to Vanessa Hull from MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, pandas are trpically so elusive and its really difficult to observe them in the wild. When the team acquired all the data, we mapped all their locations and it was fascinating to watch how life unfolds into their world, she says.
This study also offers a great opportunity to peek into the secret lives of pandas that has been closed off to humans in the past, says co-author of the study, Jindong Zhang from MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.
Pandas are usually known as solitary animals but apparently, they occasionally group together. All the older pandas were found in the same part of the forest during the same time which can extend up to several weeks in the fall season and even outside of the mating season in spring.
Zhang says that this could be evidence that pandas are not so solitary as they are usually known to be.
The researchers also noted that the male panda ventured into a bigger territory than any of the females that could suggest that he is guarding or simply checking the females and rubbing his scent on trees to mark his territory.
This study also revealed the pandas' feeding habits where they strategically return and defend their 20 to 30 core areas where they feed in the forest. Pandas eat patches of bamboos one at a time, returning to the original area after six months. This means that they remember their food source location and hopes for regrowth where they can also communicate with other pandas.
The Chinese governement has anounced that there has been a 17 percent increase in wild panda population to a total of 1,864. However, researchers are still concerned about sustainability, habitat fragmentation along with climate change and human impact that are still a threat to these pandas.