Breaking News: Panda Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

For as long as I can remember, I have heard the timeless joke that pandas make excellent gangsters. After all, when a panda goes to a restaurant, he eats, shoots, and leaves. However, as such a bear like animal, it doesn’t make too much sense that pandas only eat vegetation, after all, how would they sustain their large form? A naive answer would be that they don’t, and while it is true that sometimes they eat fish or small animals, they are simply not adept at catching prey to eat. Rather, they catch what is much more accessible; a very strong, straight, and plentiful plant: bamboo.

Bamboo is known for its high concentrations of fiber, but low concentrations of protein, but its quantity makes up for its lack of nutrients. Pandas eat 20-30 pounds of bamboo a day, dedicating more than half of their day to eating alone. Their eating habits are so consistent that they can be used as a model for the growth habits of bamboo as a function of pressure, given that pandas prefer to eat younger and proteinaceous shoots rather than older and fibrous shoots. Tracing the movement of pandas effectively follows the path of proteinaceous bamboo.

I have another theory, however, of why pandas eat bamboo, and it’s not at all because of the abundance of their food supply, but that it’s absolutely downright the cutest thing the world has ever seen when they’re eating bamboo. Observe:

Look at the intense but carefree gaze in his eyes, his lax body language and casual smirk with bamboo in his paw and arms, all displays of his purity and innocence, his ears perked with joy. His face is calm and collected, and he appears deep in thought, idly munching on his slowly shortening stick of bamboo. It is a figure that is recognized globally, and an action that goes down in history. It’s an image of a panda in a world of bliss, year round, every day. He is a philosopher as much as he is a model, an inventor as much as an artist. 

My idea is that pandas actually have very high levels of intelligence and recognized that by eating bamboo, their cuteness levels would reach the peak of the food chain, and to set that in stone, they eat it all the time. They have this evolutionary advantage of being cute that no other culinary animal does, even humans, arguably experts in the field.

Gordon Ramsey cannot cook with the simple elegance that bamboo has, no amount of luxury French fine dining can compete with the extravagant grace of its consumption. The art of bamboo consumption has been cultivated and perfected over eons of panda evolution, and as it is now, it is the perfect representation of the artistic brain of mother nature, truly a spectacle to behold.

Mother biology is a supportive critic, as that cuteness is also biologically accurate. The dopamine that they receive from eating a stick of bamboo is similar to that of a human eating chocolate, so not only are they cuddly, charming, and cute when they eat, but they’re having the time of their lives.

To further supplement their abundance of cute, they have also adapted a very monotonic lifestyle, choosing to spend their time sleeping, eating, and playing, rather than bother themselves with work. It’s an enviable, and surprising result, particularly for a wild animal. Giant pandas don’t just survive however, they thrive, and their cuteness is arguably their greatest asset next to their size. 

Why is it that being cute is an evolutionary advantage, you might ask? It’s simple. In the wild, there are only a few things that a predator won’t attack, particularly mammals. A hungry fox will never go after a panther, purely because of their size. Similarly, predators smaller than the giant panda pose little threat, save for when they hunt in packs. When that is the case, their maternal senses are overloaded, and they are rendered physically incapable of harming the panda.

It’s because of this that, in fact, they would make horrible gangsters. Their aggression has evolved into pacificity, their mannerisms are that of a baby. They are incredibly passive animals, although when taunted, they know they have the means to fight back. No baby is born a gangster, and no panda is either, but they both are excellent at throwing tantrums.

Fortunately, no panda with a stick of bamboo is prone to anger. Scroll back up, and look again at that panda. Is that the face of a man who would attack you? Not at all. Rather, he might invite you to join in. Pandas and bamboo have worked together to form the iconic duo that continues to shake the world to this day, and will forever be the pinnacle this kingdom of cute has to offer.