The Giant Panda's Thumb Is Not a Thumb
A panda is a black and white bear of China. Its famous thumb is an extended wrist bone, not a real digit.
A panda is a large black and white bear native to China, or the smaller unrelated red panda. The giant panda grips bamboo with what looks like a thumb, but it is an enlarged wrist bone, the radial sesamoid, pressed into service as a sixth digit. Stephen Jay Gould used it as a famous example of evolution improvising with whatever is available rather than designing from scratch. The red panda was named first, and the giant panda borrowed the name.
- A Chinese bear. *A giant panda.*
- Red panda — the smaller animal. *A red panda.*
- The panda's thumb — an extended wrist bone. *The panda's thumb.*
- Bamboo — its diet. *Bamboo shoots.*
- Panda car — a British police car. *A panda car.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | panda | A panda. |
| Plural | pandas | Two pandas. |
| Compound | giant panda | A giant panda. |
| Compound | red panda | A red panda. |
| Bone | radial sesamoid | The false thumb. |
- The panda ate bamboo all afternoon.Diet.
- Its thumb is a wrist bone.Anatomy.
- The red panda was named first.Naming.
The panda's odd biology
- A carnivore's digestive system eating almost entirely bamboo
- Extracts little energy, so it must eat for many hours a day
- The false thumb is an enlarged wrist bone
- Red pandas have one too, though they are not closely related
- Both evolved it independently for gripping bamboo
French *panda*, probably from a Nepali or Himalayan language, first applied to the red panda in the 1820s.
Is the panda's thumb a real thumb?
No. It is an enlarged wrist bone that works as an extra digit, a much-cited example of evolutionary improvisation.
Are red pandas and giant pandas related?
Not closely. The red panda is in its own family. Both evolved a false thumb independently for eating bamboo.