Giant pandas have lived for millions of years in China's bamboo forests. They have become uniquely adapted to feeding and reproducing in this habitat. Human disruption of the bamboo forests has put them in serious danger of extinction.

Giant pandas spend most of their time doing two things, eating and sleeping.

A panda's life revolves around bamboo. Ninety-nine percent of its diet comes from this plant.

Bamboo is a tough plant to chew and digest, but pandas are built to take on the job. A panda's thick, heavy skull, massive jaw muscles, and powerful teeth help it to eat bamboo as easily as you eat celery.

Giant pandas bite off pieces of bamboo with their molars, or back teeth. Their molars are seven times as big as human molars.

A panda has a tough esophagus and thick stomach walls to protect it from sharp bamboo splinters. But bamboo is 90 percent indigestible plant material. To get adequate nutrients from the bamboo, pandas must eat a lot of it. Because of this, they need to have access to huge areas of it in the wild.

Pandas have a false "thumb"; it is really an extension of the wrist bone. (Humans have a true opposable thumb.) When it holds bamboo, a panda presses the shaft against the sixth "digit" of its paw. It can't wrap the false thumb around an object as humans do.

In the course of a year, pandas will mate only during two or three days in the spring. They may encounter other pandas at different times of the year but will not mate.

A female panda doesn't look pregnant, even when she is about to give birth. Her cub is so small that she doesn't gain any weight.

A female panda will bear one or two clubs. Twins are common, but one usually dies. The cubs generally have a high death rate (about 50 percent in the wild). A newborn cub is very small, weighing only about the same as a stick of butter—around four ounces. Weak and fragile, it is completely dependent on its mother.

A panda cub will stay with its mother until it is about two years old. A panda reaches maturity in the wild at age five or six.

Pandas may look cute, but they are wild animals and therefore can be dangerous. Giant pandas will defend their territory with their long claws and sharp teeth.