The only reason pandas can subsist on bamboo is because they're so incredibly lazy
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Scientists have already told us giant pandas spend so much of their day hanging out eating bamboo, a food they can barely digest. Now, a new study published in Science on Friday sheds more light on how exactly they manage to survive on that diet.
Turns out, there's an easy answer: Giant pandas hardly move. The sample size is small, but the wild pandas researchers studied spent about one-half of the time physically active, compared to just one-third for their captive counterparts.
"Giant pandas have exceptionally low [daily energy expenditure], which may facilitate survival on their diet of bamboo," the authors wrote.
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Aside from sitting around all day, researchers wrote factors like their low thyroid levels and small brains, livers, and kidneys make them low-energy. Presumably, they spend their oodles of downtime watching Netflix.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
