What Scientists Discovered By Electronically Stalking Wild Pandas

​The giant panda has become the poster species for threatened animals around the world. As the official emblem of the World Wildlife Fund and the star attraction of several zoos, these bamboo-loving bears are arguably the most globally recognizable endangered species.

But despite the rampant public enthusiasm for giant pandas, very little is known about their behavior outside of zoos. Wild pandas are shy animals, and only 1,864 of them remain in China's sweeping bamboo forests. Understandably, there are several restrictions about disturbing this tiny population, so researchers are very rarely able to get a close glimpse of these solitary animals.

Until now, that is. In a new study published this month in the Journal of Mammalogy, an international team of scientists analyze data collected from the GPS collars of five wild pandas. This is one of the first times such an experiment has been conducted, because the Chinese government rarely allows researchers to collar these sensitive bears.

"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," said ecologist Vanessa Hull, a co-author on the study, in a statement.

"Once we got all the data in the computer we could see where they go and map it," Hull added. "It was so fascinating to sit down and watch their whole year unfold before you like a little window into their world."

The five pandas collared included a young female named Long Long, an adult male named Chuan Chuan, and three adult females named Pan Pan, Mei Mei, and Zhong Zhong. They were tracked from 2010 to 2012, as they roamed across the Wolong Nature Reserve, which covers an expansive 200,000 hectares, and shelters hundreds of threatened species.

The collar data provided a play-by-play of the pandas' journey through the preserve. One of the new insights it revealed was that these supposedly solitary bears are a lot more social than expected. Three of the bears hung out over a period of weeks in the fall season. Pandas mate in the spring, so copulation wasn't the aim of this extended hang out session.

"We can see it clearly wasn't just a fluke," Hull said. "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."

The data also revealed that the sole male panda seemed to regularly check up on the females in his range, and that each of the pandas curated about 30 different bamboo patches, to which they repeatedly returned to feed. "They pretty much sit down and eat their way out of an area, but then need to move on to the next place," Hull said.

These new insights into the secretive world of pandas are interesting on their own merits, but they also could help inform future conservation efforts. Understanding the behavior and range of endangered species is essential to securing the appropriate space for their recovery.

Fortunately, efforts to preserve wilderness for these iconic animals seem to paying off. The wild panda population is up 17 percent since 2007. It's a slow rise, but for the beleaguered bears, it is better than nothing—or worse, a population drop.

It will take a lot more work before wild pandas bounce back to numbers that are more conducive to frequent GPS collaring, and other research techniques for studying the bears. For now, it's enough that Hull and her colleagues have shown that the world of the giant panda is shrouded in mystery, in spite of the celebrity status of their domestic brethren.