This might come as a surprise to those who think pandas only eat bamboo shoots.
Chengdu Business Daily reported last Saturday (Feb 25) that a wild giant panda attacked and devoured a goat on Wednesday in Leshan in China’s Sichuan province
Locals claimed they saw the metre-long panda climbing down a mountain and wandering for 20 minutes before attacking the goat, reported the Global Times.
Photographs taken showed the bloody bones of a goat at the scene.
The incident prompted a hashtag “Wild giant panda eating goat” on social media, attracting 1.75 million views on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, with many netizens expressing surprise that pandas could eat meat.
Weibo user “Song” wrote: “I thought pandas are naïve and only eat bamboo, I didn’t expect them to be so fierce.”
Although giant pandas are generally herbivores, their evolutionary ancestors are believed to be carnivorous, a forestry official told news portal scol.com.
The instinct probably continues to exist in the modern panda, he said.
In 2011, a wild panda was caught on camera chewing the bones of a wild cow in Sichuan, reported BBC News. Scientists, who had set up the camera to monitor panda behaviour, called it a rare incident.
It is believed there are over 1,800 wild pandas in China, according to figures reported by Chinanews.com in June, 2016.
chenj@sph.com.sg
Read also: Man gets $116,000 compensation after panda attack
