The best answer comes from a 2017 study in the journal Behavioral Ecology titled “Why is the giant panda black and white?”, by Tim Caro, Hannah Walker, Zoe Rossman, Megan Hendrix and Theodore Stankowich. Its conclusion is that the panda’s coat isn’t doing one job. It’s doing several, and different parts of the body are doing different ones.
The white areas are camouflage against snow. The black shoulders and legs are camouflage in shade. The markings on the face are not camouflage at all, and appear to be for communicating with other pandas.
The three findings #
White for snow. The study found that the “white face, nape, dorsum, flank, belly, and rump are adapted for crypsis against a snowy background.” Crypsis is the technical term for blending in. A panda seen at a distance across a snowfield is difficult to pick out.
Black for shade. The “black shoulders and legs are adapted for crypsis in shade.” Mountain bamboo forest is a patchwork of bright gaps and deep shadow, and the dark regions break up the animal’s outline against the dark parts.
A face that talks. The dark facial markings came out differently from everything else. The researchers concluded that “dark ears may be involved with signaling intent about ferocity whereas dark eye marks may serve in individual recognition.” In other words, the ears warn and the eye patches identify.
Put together, the authors describe the coat as serving “a constellation of functions that enable it to match its background in different environments and to communicate using facial features.”
Why a panda needs camouflage in both seasons at once #
The reason the panda ended up with two camouflage schemes on one body comes back to what it eats.
Most bears in cold climates solve winter by not being awake for it. They spend autumn building fat reserves and then sleep through the lean months. A giant panda can’t. Its diet is about 99% bamboo, and bamboo provides so little usable energy that the animal spends 10 to 16 hours a day eating just to stay level. There is no surplus to store, so the panda stays active through snow and through summer shade alike.
An animal that is awake in both environments needs to be inconspicuous in both. A polar bear only has to match snow. A black bear only has to match forest. The panda is the rare case of a large mammal that has to do both at once, and the compromise looks like a panda.
Later work has supported the camouflage reading, finding that the pattern functions as disruptive coloration at a distance, breaking up the body’s outline, while the animal blends into the background when viewed from further away. Up close, from a few metres, no pattern is going to hide a bear.
The explanations that don’t hold up as well #
Three older ideas circulate widely and have weaker support.
Thermoregulation. The idea that black patches absorb heat and white patches reflect it sounds plausible, but the distribution of the panda’s markings doesn’t match what you’d expect if temperature were driving it, and pandas live across a range of conditions with the same coat.
Warning coloration. Skunks and badgers use bold black-and-white to advertise that they’re not worth attacking. Adult giant pandas have very few natural predators, so there isn’t much to warn off, and the pattern doesn’t behave like a classic warning signal.
It’s just random. Coat patterns in mammals are usually under some selective pressure, and the 2017 study’s value is in showing that different body regions correlate with different functions rather than varying arbitrarily.
None of these are settled beyond argument. Coloration research works by comparing patterns across many species and looking for what they’re associated with, which produces strong inferences rather than proof.
Are panda cubs born black and white? #
No. Newborn giant pandas are pink, hairless and blind, weighing just 3 to 5 ounces, and the familiar markings appear as their fur grows in over the following weeks. A cub is around 1/900th the size of its mother at birth, which we cover in how big is a baby panda.
Why red pandas are red instead #
Red pandas face a different problem, and they aren’t closely related to giant pandas at all: the giant panda is a bear, while the red panda is the only living member of the family Ailuridae.
A red panda spends much of its time in trees in Himalayan forests, and its reddish-brown coat is usually explained as camouflage among the rust-coloured moss and lichen that grow on the fir trees there. That explanation has had far less research attention than the giant panda’s coloration, so it should be held more loosely. The species comparison is in giant panda vs red panda.
The one thing both animals settled on is a false thumb, an enlarged wrist bone with a pad of skin, evolved separately in each species for gripping bamboo stalks.
Black and white is also, not coincidentally, extremely easy to draw. Merge Panda is a free drop-and-merge puzzle whose whole reward ladder is built on it: eleven tiers of snacks stack in a bamboo crate and merge upward until a Panda Cub appears, then a Mama Panda, then an Emperor Panda in a crown. Two colours, no ambiguity about what you’re looking at, which is more or less the point of the real animal’s face.
Frequently asked questions #
Who worked out why pandas are black and white? #
Tim Caro, Hannah Walker, Zoe Rossman, Megan Hendrix and Theodore Stankowich, in a paper published in Behavioral Ecology volume 28, issue 3, in 2017. Caro’s broader research career has focused on why mammals are coloured the way they are, including work on zebra stripes.
Is the panda’s coat camouflage or a warning signal? #
Mostly camouflage, according to the 2017 analysis, split between snow camouflage in the white regions and shade camouflage in the black shoulders and legs. The facial markings are the exception and appear to be signals to other pandas rather than concealment.
Why do pandas have black eye patches? #
The study proposes that the dark eye marks serve in individual recognition, letting pandas tell each other apart. Since the eye patches vary in shape between individuals, that’s consistent with the pattern acting as something like a face.
Do pandas have black ears for a reason? #
The researchers suggest the dark ears signal intent about ferocity, functioning as a threat display toward other animals. The ears and eye patches were the two regions in the study that didn’t fit a camouflage explanation.
Are all pandas black and white? #
All giant pandas share the same basic pattern, though the exact shape of the markings varies between individuals, which is part of why the eye patches may work for recognition. Brown-and-white giant pandas have been recorded in the Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi, but they are rare.
Why aren’t red pandas black and white? #
Different family, different forest, different problem. Red pandas live in the tree canopy of Himalayan forests rather than in a mix of snowfield and shade, and their colouring is commonly explained as matching the reddish moss and lichen on fir trunks.