Email Print Share
July 6, 2015

Panda in the mountains of the Wolong Nature Reserve

A panda in the mountains of the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, China. The picture was taken using a motion-detector camera trap.

More about this Image
A recent study by researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) followed five pandas wearing global positioning system tracking collars to better understand how the reclusive animals move through their habitat. The five pandas -- three female adults, a young female and a male -- were captured, collared and tracked from 2010 to 2012 in the Wolong Nature Reserve in southwest China.

Among other things, the study revealed that the pandas liked each other's company at times. Pandas are known to be loners, so researchers were surprised to find that three of the pandas in the group were located in the same part of the forest at the same time during some periods. This occurred for several weeks during the fall and outside the spring mating season, suggesting that perhaps pandas are not as solitary as has been thought.

The study also found that the single male of the group wondered over a larger range than the females of the group. The researchers speculate that perhaps he was checking on the females and advertising his presences by marking trees with his scent glands.

"Pandas are such an elusive species and it's very hard to observe them in wild, so we haven't had a good picture of where they are from one day to the next," said Vanessa Hull, a research associate at MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). Jindong Zhang, a co-author on the paper and postdoctoral researcher at CSIS, continues "This was a great opportunity to get a peek into the panda's secretive society that has been closed off to us in the past."

This research was funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

To learn more about this research, see the MSU story A peek at the secret life of pandas. (Date of Image: 2010-2012)

Credit: Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

See other images like this on your iPhone or iPad download NSF Science Zone on the Apple App Store.


Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.

Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.

Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.

Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (1.8 MB)

Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.