The only reason pandas can subsist on bamboo is because they're so incredibly lazy


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.
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