With all the hullabaloo surrounding giant panda’s following recent births of cubs in Washington DC, Vienna, and Taipei, as well as the almost certain pregnancy news of Edinburgh Zoo’s favourite Chinese imports, it is important to realise one thing; that, despite being adorable, the giant panda is a strong contender for the most useless animal on the planet. In fact, the only thing that appears to stand in its way in claiming this prestigious title is the Terrible Hairy Fly- a species of fly with no wings and a total geographical distribution limited to a single cleft on a Kenyan mountain. 

So what designates pandas as nature’s biggest monochromatic mistake? It’s many flaws can be sourced to the fact that their diet is more specific than a fruitarian with a nut allergy, and to make things worse it’s the wrong diet for their body-for, whilst they may look cute and cuddly, a panda’s body is designed to make it a highly efficient killing machine. This basically means that, despite their love for the stuff, they can’t really process bamboo efficiently. Why they started down such an illogical road is unknown (maybe they thought eating meat was too mainstream) but the change seems to have been made permanent by a loss-of-function mutation that encodes their Tas1r1 receptor. This is a protein responsible for recognising the umami or savoury and without it pandas have no motivation to consume the food their body is adapted to digest. In order to attain the nutrients necessary to survive, a panda is required to eat between 9-14kg of bamboo a day and restricts its social interactions to a bare minimum so as to preserve energy.

Which leads to another point, despite humanities puzzling drive to create more of these black-and-white evolutionary misfires, pandas have all the libido of a retired eunuch. Their mating season lasts of all of three days and despite all the benefits of modern technology at their disposal (the males have even been given Viagra and shown videos of other pandas getting down and dirty in a bid to get them in the mood) most pregnancies of captive giant pandas are the result of artificial insemination. Even in successful pregnancies, the giant panda is hardly a good example of caring and competent parents. The male has no role in caring for the young and the cub recently born in Taipei had to be removed from its mother after she accidentally injured it. So by all means appreciate the giant panda’s cuddly exterior- just don’t hold them high as an example of an animal critical to nature.