Head to head
Red Panda vs Giant Panda
The red panda and the giant panda share a name, a homeland in the mountains of China, and a diet built almost entirely of bamboo, and people naturally assume they are close kin. They are not. The giant panda is a bear. The red panda is the sole living member of its own family, most closely related to raccoons, weasels, and skunks. Their resemblance in diet and even in anatomy is a striking case of two unrelated animals solving the same problem the same way.
| Red Panda | Giant Panda | |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Ailuridae, its own family (near raccoons and weasels) | Ursidae, a true bear |
| Size | About 3 to 6 kg, the size of a large house cat | About 70 to 150 kg |
| Coat | Rusty red above, dark below, long ringed tail | Bold black and white |
| Range | Himalayas, southwest China, north Myanmar | A few mountain ranges in central China |
| Lifestyle | Mostly arboreal, active at dawn and dusk | Mostly terrestrial |
| Diet | Bamboo, plus fruit, acorns, eggs, insects | Bamboo, over 99 percent of the diet |
| False thumb | Yes, evolved independently | Yes, evolved independently |
| Conservation | Endangered, around 10,000 or fewer | Vulnerable, around 1,800 wild |
Red Panda vs Giant Panda: common questions
Are red pandas and giant pandas related?
Only very distantly, at the level of both being carnivorans, the broad group that also includes dogs, cats, seals, and bears. The giant panda is a bear, confirmed by anatomy and DNA. The red panda is the only living species in the family Ailuridae, and its nearest relatives are the musteloids, the group containing raccoons, weasels, skunks, and otters. The two pandas last shared a common ancestor perhaps 40 million years ago. Their shared features, the bamboo diet and the false thumb, evolved separately in each lineage.
Which was called "panda" first?
The red panda. It was described by European science in 1825 and given the name panda, thought to derive from a Nepali or regional word. The giant panda was unknown to Western science until 1869 and was named for its resemblance to the red panda in diet and in the region it came from, originally as "parti-coloured bear" and then "giant panda", which implied the red panda was the original panda. For a while the red panda was even called the "lesser panda" to distinguish them.
What is the false thumb and why do both pandas have it?
Neither panda has a true opposable thumb; instead, a bone in the wrist called the radial sesamoid is enlarged and elongated into a pad that sticks out alongside the five normal fingers, working like a sixth digit. Both animals use it to clamp a bamboo stalk against the palm while stripping leaves or biting off sections. The giant panda's version is larger and more developed. Because the two species are not close relatives, the fact that both evolved essentially the same structure for the same job is a classic textbook example of convergent evolution.