You probably saw the title and think I’m some human monster who wants to mass murder pandas and a shill working for some corporation that wants to deforest all of China. You also probably are going to furiously type about how beautiful and cute they are and rage on me for being such an evil human monster who could even possibly bring up the notion of not saving pandas. Just take your emotional goggle off for a minute and think about giant pandas through an objective and scientific lens.
Most people know all the basic things about the giant panda, they’re somewhat large bears native to China who rely on bamboo, they’re critically endangered species and have become icons of the conservation effort, mostly because they’re cute and other endangered animals arguably more worth saving, such as okapis or Indian mangroves, don’t really trigger the feels. All in all, giant pandas are the perfect animal to hold up as a symbol of human cruelty and conservation. Or so they seem, in fact, pandas are horrible at surviving, and they are one of the worst evolved animals on the planet.
Remember natural selection? If natural selection had taken its full course, the giant panda would be extinct quite fast, and despite what activists may tell you, no, the panda’s endangerment was not caused by humans. In fact, pandas were going extinct for a while, and any evolutionary scientist observing pandas wouldn’t have a hard time telling why. Pandas rely on bamboo, a low nutrition food source that the panda’s body isn’t evolved to digest properly, and thus extracts very little nutrition from it. Adding on to that, pandas depend almost entirely on bamboo, and the species has failed to adapt to anything else, even though they aren’t afraid to kill and eat meat on rare occasions. That’s the problem, anyone who knows basic evolutionary science will tell you a species that relies overtly on a single food source goes extinct pretty fast, human interference or not. It’s called natural selection, a trend that’s been going on for millions of years before humans even existed. Species that have poor adaptations often go extinct pretty fast, or stay on a small island or remote area with no threats. In addition, pandas almost have no niches in their environment (and no, despite what you may have heard, eating bamboo is not a unique niche. Many animals of the habitat do that, getting rid of pandas won’t cause a “bamboo overpopulation” if you’re worried)
So why does it matter, you ask? Well, panda conservation efforts costs anywhere from 500 million to ~5 billion USD every year. This is, all arguably to keep an already dying species on life support against the uphill battle of natural selection. Do you really think this is worth the cost and effort? Should we be focusing on species that are actually being destroyed because of humans and those who actually serve a purpose to their environment, such as, like aforementioned, the Indian mangrove?
