It is a specialty of China, a natural heritage and living fossil recognized all over the world, and it is at least eight or nine million years old from the appearance of its ancestors to the present.

It prefers to be solitary, eats while walking, and wanders around, but it is slow, has poor vision, and has a docile temperament.

It has won the favor and love of the world because of its round body, cute movements, and black and white colors.

It belongs to the mammalian class carnivores, but its diet is highly specialized, and it has become a vegetarian diet that lives on bamboo.

It is a cousin of bears, and it is bear-like, with a large, round head, an obese body, and an extremely short tail.

When it hears an unusual noise, it often runs away immediately.

It lives in dense bamboo forests for a long time, the light is very dim, and there are many obstacles, which makes it have poor hearing and vision, but its sense of smell is sensitive.

Its ancient names include tapir, white leopard, yu, etc.

It is withdrawn by nature, likes to be alone, and often disperses and lives alone in dense bamboo bushes, so it is called "bamboo hermit".

It often lives near clear springs and flowing water, and has a thirsty appetite. Sometimes, they travel long distances to distant valleys to get water. Once a water source is found, it is like a drunken man lying by the stream, drinking so much that he is "drunk" and unable to move.

Therefore, there is a saying that "pandas are drunk with water".

It is fat and bear-like, plump and rich, with a round head and a short tail, shaped like a bear but slightly smaller, with a short tail and black around the eyes, ears, front and rear limbs, and shoulders, and the rest is white.

It is dense and shiny, hardy, and it likes to eat bamboo leaves, bamboo shoots.

It mainly inhabits deciduous broad-leaved forests, mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests and mountain bamboo forests in subalpine coniferous forests at an altitude of 2000-3000 meters, and mainly feeds on bamboo stems, bamboo leaves and bamboo shoots, and occasionally preys on small animals.

It is not only selected as the monogram by the World Wildlife Federation, but also often assumes the task of "ambassador of peace", taking the friendship of the Chinese people across the ocean and making friends abroad, which is welcomed by the people of all countries.

Its name is the famous giant panda!

Their activity areas are mostly in gullies, mountain depressions, river valley terraces, etc., where bamboo grows well, the temperature is relatively stable, the concealment conditions are good, and the food resources and water sources are abundant.

They are not afraid of the cold and never hibernate.

Even when the temperature drops as low as minus 14 degrees Celsius, they still walk through the snow-capped bamboo.

Giant pandas were also known as "iron-eating beasts" in ancient times.

It is recorded in the "Divine Strange Scripture: The Book of the Middle Wilderness": "There are beasts in the south, the size and shape of the horns and feet are like buffaloes, the fur is as black as lacquer, the iron eats and drinks, and its dung can be used as weapons, and its advantages are as good as rigid, and the name is iron." “

Dongfang Shuo of the Han Dynasty described it in the "Divine Strange Classic": "There is a beast in the south, called iron. ”

Guo Pu's annotation in "Erya Liberation Beast" in the Jin Dynasty is as follows: "Like a bear, with a small head, paralyzed feet, black and white barges can lick and eat copper, iron and bamboo bones." ”

Yuan Mei of the Qing Dynasty described in the "New Qi Harmonic First Collection": "There are tapir beasts in F County, which are good at eating copper and iron without hurting people. The iron sheet wrapped on the city gate is all intrigued. ”

According to legend, in ancient times, Chi You, the chief of Jiuli, once had a pet, which was actually a mount.

Chiyou, the iron-eating mount, is the "iron-eating beast", in fact, it is the ancestor of our national treasure giant panda.

Chiyou had won a great victory in the Great War with the powerful alliance with the Iron Eaters. How can an iron-eating beast not be feared?

Perhaps this is the most primitive form of the giant panda, a national treasure.

After countless years of evolution, the "Iron Eater" finally became docile and cute.

Legend has it that as early as 1869, the French missionary David decided to bring this adorable "black and white bear" back to China.

However, it was not easy to bring it from Muping on the western edge of the Shuxi Plain to France on the other side of the Atlantic, and under the conditions of very limited transportation conditions at that time, it was not easy to cross the mountains and rivers and cross the ocean.

This cute "black and white bear", where can withstand the bumps of the long mountain road and the constant change of climate, as a result, it is dying before it reaches Furong City.

Father David had no choice but to make a taxidermy of the skin of this "black and white bear" and send it to the National Museum of France to be exhibited.

What Father David never expected was that the world's first giant panda model specimen was produced in this way.

After the Huadu National Museum exhibited this animal skin, no one knew it at the time, and people saw from the animal skin that it had a big round white face, and there were two deep black spots around its eyes, as if it was wearing a pair of sunglasses, so some people concluded that there was no such animal in the world at all, and this animal skin was fake! Some people said that it was just a strange bear.

However, after thorough research by the director of the museum, Edwards believed that it was neither a bear nor a cat, but a larger cat bear similar to the small cat bear found in the Tibetan area of China, so he officially named it "Big Cat Bear".

The discovery of the giant panda caused a sensation in the Western world.

Since then, waves of Western explorers, hunters and museum taxidermy collectors have descended on the panda region to try to unravel the panda's mysteries and hunt this exotic animal.

Among them were Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt, two sons of the famous Roosevelt.

The two brothers first went to Muping County, where David found the giant panda, but found nothing, and then entered Daliang Mountain.

They also shot and killed a giant panda in YX County and brought it back to the United States as a specimen.

Later, explorers from Germany, England and other countries came to China to hunt giant pandas, and even more were purchased from Chinese hunters.

For a time, many museums in Western countries had specimens of giant pandas.

But they were never able to catch a single live giant panda.

In 1936, 35-year-old Wall Street fashion designer Ruth Harklesss was newly married, and her husband William Harkless, an avid explorer, went to China two weeks after the wedding to find the giant panda.

However, William died of illness at sea before he could reach the panda breeding area.

Ruth's initial request to go with her husband was rejected by him as a burden, and now she is determined to fulfill his legacy, and two months after his death, she set out for China in April 1936.

Ruth's expedition consisted of just two people – she and 25-year-old Mimesian-Chinese Yang Quentin.

They traveled all the way west, looking for traces of giant pandas in the mountains and mountains of western China, and even set traps for hunting.

On November 9, when they came to a snow-covered bamboo forest (Caopo Township, according to experts), they heard a sound similar to a baby's cry coming from a dead tree hole.

When Yang Tingkun caught a small furry animal from the tree hole and handed it to Ruth, who was already numb from the cold, she couldn't believe that this was the living giant panda that Westerners had dreamed of for more than half a century!

Ruth thought that the little one, who was less than three pounds, was a female (which later turned out to be a male), so she named her "Su Lin" after Yang Tingkun's wife.

Lucky Ruth knew how precious what she had gotten, and she took "Su Lin" all the way to the city of Furong quickly, and then flew to the magic capital.

Finally, they ran into trouble leaving the country.

Although Westerners have sought the giant panda for more than half a century and know that it is a rare and endangered animal, until then, the knowledge of the giant panda in China was almost zero.

At that time, Chinese hunters were allowed to hunt this "bear" at will, and the government did not have any regulations and measures to protect it at that time.

The trouble with Ruth is not that she has captured a giant panda, but that she has not been able to leave the country because of incomplete procedures to enter the mainland of China.

In the end, she took a vague approach, and after going through the hardships, she easily boarded the ship to the United States, she put "Su Lin" in a large wicker basket, wrote "carry a pug with you" on the customs registration form, and mixed out of the customs.