![]() ![]() The team created 3-D digital models of the skeletons of two of those cubs. Baby panda remains aren’t easy to find, but luckily, Smithsonian’s National Zoo has preserved the remains of five full term cubs born to the panda couple Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing in the 1980s, none of which survived long after birth. To test this idea, researchers from Duke University analyzed the skeletons of several baby pandas as well as other bear species and mammalian carnivores. And since bears are some of the only mammals that are pregnant while they hibernate, scientists suspected having super-small offspring helped preserve the health of the mother bear, allowing extra growth to take place outside of the womb. Their mama bears, on the other hand, weigh about 200 pounds and stand up to three feet tall and six feet long, according to Smithsonian’s National Zoo.)īecause such an extreme infant-to-mother ratio is rare in most mammals-only several others, including kangaroos, rival bear babies in size-scientists hypothesized that the size difference might be unique to bears. (Baby pandas weigh about 3.5 ounces and are roughly the size of a stick of butter. But panda babies are extreme their mothers are about 400 times heavier than their babies. Baby dogs, cats, seals, raccoons, and bears-to name only a few-all enter life small, blind, mostly hairless and pretty helpless. Placental animals, or mammals in the order Carnivora, give birth to relatively underdeveloped babies, reports Rafi Letzer at Live Science. However, a new study published in Journal of Anatomy rules out hibernation as the cause-and the real reason why remains a mystery. ![]() Even though pandas don’t hibernate, scientists assumed having tiny babies is just evolutionarily-baked into the bear family tree. In many bear species, pregnancy overlaps with long months of hibernation when the mother bear does not eat or drink instead, she supplies her fetus with fat and protein from her own body. Researchers used to think bears had tiny babies was because they evolved to hibernate. When giant pandas are born, they’re the opposite of giant. ![]()
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