Red Panda

The red panda is a small, arboreal mammal native to the temperate forests of the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China, easily recognized by its rich reddish-brown fur, white-marked face and long, bushy tail ringed with pale bands that it wraps around itself for warmth. Despite sharing part of its name and a bamboo-heavy diet with the much larger giant panda, it is not closely related, sitting instead in its own family most closely allied to raccoons and weasels. It spends much of its life in trees, feeding mainly on bamboo leaves and shoots supplemented by fruit, insects and small animals, and it is generally solitary and most active at dawn and dusk. Habitat loss, fragmentation of its mountain forest range and poaching have driven a sharp population decline, and the red panda is classified as endangered, with an estimated global population well under ten thousand mature individuals.