AnimalsThe giant panda is a bear that lives almost entirely on bamboo. It spends most of the day eating, and has an extra thumb-like wrist bone for holding stems. Newborn pandas are tiny, pink and helpless. Protection of its forests has helped its numbers rise.
Quick facts
- Scientific name
- Ailuropoda melanoleuca
- Group
- Mammals
- Diet
- Herbivore (eats plants)
- Lives in
- Central China
- Habitat
- Cool, wet mountain bamboo forests
- A young one is called
- cub
- A group is called
- embarrassment
- Conservation status
- Vulnerable
How it is classified
Scientists sort living things into groups within groups. Reading down, each step is a smaller group, ending with the species itself.
- Kingdom Animalia
- Phylum Chordata
- Class Mammalia
- Order Carnivora
- Family Ursidae
- Genus Ailuropoda
- Species Ailuropoda melanoleuca
Other members of the family Ursidae on this site: brown bear, polar bear, sloth bear.
More distant relatives in the order Carnivora: cheetah, dog, domestic cat, jaguar, leopard, lion, red fox, red panda, snow leopard, spotted hyena, tiger, walrus.
Classification follows the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Other reference works arrange some groups differently. How classification works.
Is it in danger?
The giant panda is listed as Vulnerable. The species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild.
This is the IUCN Red List category as recorded in Wikidata on 11 November 2026. The IUCN Red List itself is the authority and may carry a newer assessment. What the categories mean.