5 Cool Facts about Red Pandas for International Red Panda Day

In honor of International Red Panda Day, celebrated on the third Saturday of every September, here are five cool facts about red pandas:

1. Red pandas are also called lesser pandas or firefoxes, but red pandas are actually not closely related to giant pandas, foxes, or even raccoons.
2. Red pandas mostly eat bamboo, and they have to eat a lot of it per day to get enough nutrition. A female red panda was once recorded as having eaten 20,000 bamboo leaves in one day!
3. When it’s cold, red pandas wrap themselves up in their bushy tail and go into a deep sleep called torpor. In torpor, their body temperature lowers and their respiration rate goes down.
4. Like raccoons, red pandas use their paws to scoop up water to drink.
5. When threatened, red pandas stare at their enemy, bob their heads, arch their tails and stand up on their hind legs.

Learn more cool red panda facts at our article, Red Panda.

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