Was the giant panda a phantom animal?
Today the giant panda is a zoo favorite, but because it lived deep in the mountains of China, Western scientists did not learn of it until the late 19th century. Though tales of an animal with strange black-and-white markings circulated, almost no foreigners had seen one, and it was long considered a “phantom animal.”
How it was discovered and confirmed
In 1869, Armand David, a French missionary doing mission work and natural history research in China, obtained a black-and-white pelt in Sichuan and sent it to the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The following year it was described as a new species based on the specimen, and the giant panda officially entered the world of science. A living panda first left China in 1936, and the cub taken to America caused a huge boom.
What we know today
The giant panda is a member of the bear family that lives mainly on bamboo. It can grip bamboo deftly with a “sixth finger,” a modified wrist bone. Together with the okapi and the pygmy hippopotamus, it is sometimes called one of the “world’s three great rare animals.” It first came to Japan in 1972. Conservation work has helped its numbers recover, and in 2016 the IUCN Red List downgraded it from Endangered to Vulnerable.
