FILE - Large panda Da Mao eats bamboo on the Toronto Zoo on Thursday, Might 16, 2013. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)
Pandas are famously choosy eaters. They solely devour bamboo -- a poor high quality eating regimen low in fats.
However the creatures seem to have advanced to get probably the most out of what they do eat, in keeping with a brand new examine.
Their intestine micro organism adjustments in late spring and early summer time when bamboo is at its most nutritious -- whereas it is sprouting protein-rich inexperienced shoots. The micro organism makes the bear achieve extra weight and retailer extra fats, which researchers stated could compensate for an absence of vitamins later within the 12 months, when bamboo crops have solely fibrous leaves to chomp on.
"We have identified these pandas have a distinct set of intestine microbiota through the shoot-eating season for a very long time, and it is very apparent that they're chubbier throughout this time of the 12 months," stated lead examine writer Guangping Huang, a researcher for the Institute of Zoology on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences in a information launch.
The examine was revealed on Jan. 18 in the journal Cell Experiences.
To analyze how the intestine micro organism might have an effect on a panda's metabolism, the crew first collected the feces of eight wild big pandas in China's Qingling mountains throughout each leaf-eating season and shoot-eating season after which examined how the poop samples differed.
They discovered that a bacterium known as Clostridium butyricum was extra plentiful within the pandas' guts through the season after they benefit from the contemporary bamboo shoots.
To grasp whether or not this micro organism helps the bears achieve and retailer weight, the researchers carried out a fecal transplant, placing the panda poop they collected into lab mice. Then they fed the mice for 3 weekswith a bamboo-based eating regimen that simulated what pandas eat.
Whereas mice are very totally different from pandas, it wasn't doable to run such checks on endangered and weak animals, stated Wei Fuwen, a coauthor of the examine and a professor on the Key Lab of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology within the Institute of Zoology on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences. Mice have been a great substitute.
"Mice have confirmed to be an efficient mannequin for learning the operate of the intestine microbiome in people," Wei stated by way of electronic mail.
Researchers discovered that mice transplanted with panda feces collected throughout shoot-eating season gained considerably extra weight, regardless of consuming identical quantity of meals.
"The intestine micro organism was the one variable on this analysis," Wei defined.
Felix Sommer, group chief of useful host-microbiome analysis at Christian-Albrechts-College in Kiel, Germany, famous that the variety of pandas concerned within the examine was small and the experiment had solely been carried out as soon as. Sommer, who was not concerned within the analysis, additionally confused the researchers had discovered a correlation, not a causal relationship between the micro organism and weight achieve.
"I might have requested for some sort of validation experiment or a re-sampling at one other 12 months or time level," stated Sommer, who has carried out comparable analysis on hibernating brown bears, by way of electronic mail.
Wei stated that additional work is required to validate the causal relationship straight in pandas. He added that their work might assist enhance the well being of captive big pandas.
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