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VIDEO: Panda Bear Squeezes Through Tiny Crack

Pandas are the sweetest, most adorable wild animals!

They are big, massive bears, but they are just as lazy and harmless.

They can also be quite funny at times.

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This footage captured an adorable panda bear squeezing through a tiny crack to break free.

According to Live Science, giant pandas are bears that are native to China, where they are considered a national treasure. Even with this exalted status, giant pandas are endangered: only about 1,600 live in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). About 100 live in zoos around the world.

In the wild, giant pandas are only found in the remote, mountainous regions of central China, in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, according to the National Zoo. In this area, there are cool, wet bamboo forests that are perfect for the giant panda’s needs. Giant pandas make their dens from hollowed-out logs or stumps of conifer trees found within the forest.

A giant panda’s appetite for bamboo is insatiable. They eat bamboo 12 hours a day. That adds up to 28 lbs. (12.5 kg) of bamboo each day, according to National Geographic. But one reason they eat so much is that bamboo is low in nutrients, according to the San Diego Zoo. Giant pandas also eat rodents, fish, insects and birds. Eating both vegetation and meat makes these pandas omnivores.

The giant panda’s stomach is ideal for digesting bamboo. The walls of the stomach are extra-muscular to digest the wood of the bamboo. The stomach is also covered inside with mucus that prevents it from being punctured by splinters.

Giant pandas are loners. They dislike being around other pandas so much that they have a heightened sense of smell that lets them know when another panda is nearby so it can be avoided, according to the National Geographic. If another giant panda does get close, the two will end up swatting and growling at each other. Sometimes they will even bite each other.

On average, a giant panda’s territory is about 1.9 square miles (5 square kilometers). To mark their territory, giant pandas secrete a waxy scent marker that they rub on their territory. Other giant pandas can tell the sex, age, reproductive condition, social status and more from the scent marker, according to the San Diego Zoo.

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The only time that these pandas seek each other out is during mating season. Males will use their smelling ability to find a female when they are ready to mate.

The IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species categorizes giant pandas as endangered. This is an improvement. In the 1980s, giant pandas were listed as rare by the IUCN.

As of 2008, when the most recent assessment was made, there was “little doubt” that there were less than 2,500 mature giant pandas in the wild. A survey in 2002 indicated a total population of about 1,600 individuals. National Geographic estimates that 100 giant pandas live in zoos.

Steps are being taken to save them, though. There are 50 panda reserves in China that protect around 45 percent of the giant panda’s habitat, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Joanna Grey

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