Giant pandas only eat bamboo, why are they still chubby?

Giant pandas only eat bamboo shoots and leaves, why are they still chubby? Perhaps the secret lies in the gut microbiome

A team led by Wei Fuwen, an academician from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported this week in the journal Cell Reports that changes in the giant panda's gut microbiome during the bamboo shoot season help them gain weight and store more fat to compensate for Malnutrition in the season of eating bamboo leaves

"This is the first time we have established a causal relationship between the giant panda's gut microbiota and its phenotype," said Huang Guangping, co-first author of the paper and from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Many animals experience seasonal changes in their gut bacteria due to changes in food availability

The research team led by Academician Wei Fuwen has been studying wild giant pandas living in the Qinling Mountains for decades

The researchers found that the guts of these wild giant pandas were enriched with a bacterium called Clostridium butyricum during the bamboo shoot season compared to the bamboo leaf season

The results of the study showed that mice transplanted with Enterobacter sp.

Further analysis showed that butyrate, a metabolite of C.

"For endangered and vulnerable wild animals, we cannot test them directly

Next, the research team plans to map out more microbes in the panda's gut and understand how they affect the panda's health

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Seasonal shift of the gut microbiome synchronizes host peripheral circadian rhythm for physiological adaptation to a low-fat diet in the giant panda