Researchers at Michigan State University discovered the secret life of pandas with the help of GPS technology. It turned out that these furry mammals are social and flirtatious, much different from a previous belief that they are loners.
"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," Vanessa Hull, a research associate at MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, said in a university news release.
The team captured five giant pandas from the wild and collared them with a GPS tracker. They then tracked their whereabouts from 2010 to 2012 as they roam around in the Wolong Nature Reserve in southwest China. The giants pandas were named Pan Pan, Mei Mei and Zhong Zhong (three adult females), Long Long (a young female), and Chuan Chuan (a male), according to Discovery News.
The researchers were surprised that the giant pandas are hanging out with each other sometimes. Three of the pandas, all females, were always together even after the mating season. They also seem to travel in packs.
The male panda, on the other hand, travels alone but visits the females sometimes just to check on them.
"We can see it clearly wasn't just a fluke. We could see they were in the same locations, which we never would have expected for that length of time and at that time of year," Hull said.
The researchers also found out that pandas spend a lot of time eating bamboo in up to 30 different areas.
The study is the first to provide details on the movement of the giant pandas and their interaction with one another.
"They pretty much sit down and eat their way out of an area, but then need to move on to the next place," she said.
The study was published in the March 27 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy.
