Kevin Black, age 7, of Salina, Kan., for his question:
IS THE PANDA A BEAR?
You've seen pictures of the giant panda, and it does look a lot like a bear. However, the large black and white bearlike animal is definitely not a bear. Most zoologists place the attractive animal in the raccoon family.
Actually there are two kinds of Asian animals called the panda. They are very much unlike each other in appearance.
The giant panda has a white, chubby body with black legs and a broad band across the shoulders. He has a large, round head, and his white face has black patches around each eye. In addition, the giant panda has small, black ears.
The red panda, sometimes called the lesser panda, is the other animal. He has long, soft fur and a bushy tail with rings like that of a raccoon. As his name suggests, his fur is red.
The red panda weighs from six to 12 pounds and grows to be about two feet long, not including a long tail. The giant panda, on the other hand, weighs between 200 and 300 pounds and can be from three and a half to five feet long, not including a very short tail.
Both kinds of pandas live in bamboo forests on upper mountain slopes of southwestern China and eastern Tibet. The red panda also lives in Nepal, Sikkim and northern Burma. The only places outside of China that you'll find the giant panda is some of the major zoos in various parts of the world.
Giant pandas do indeed resemble bears in shape and size, and the slow, clumsy way they walk. Like bears, they can stand erect on their hind legs.
Giant pandas eat chiefly bamboo shoots, although they also eat other plants. Occasionally they feed on fish and small rodents. A giant panda may eat as much as 20 pounds of food every day.
Like the giant panda, the red panda likes bamboo shoots although he also eats acorns, roots and sometimes insects.
Both the giant panda and the red panda can grasp objects between their fingers and a so called "extra thumb." This thumb, which is a bone covered by a fleshy pad, grows from the wrist of each forepaw.
Pandas use their true thumbs as fingers. The red panda's extra thumb is not so fully developed as the giant panda's.
In China, wild pandas are rare and they are carefully protected by law.
A female panda will give birth once a year to one or two cubs. Giant pandas in zoos, however, don't often have babies.
In 1972, China gave two giant pandas to the United States. They are living in the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C.