Big panda

The main range of the big panda is limited by the eastern ridges of the Sino-Tibetan Mountains: Mingshan and Qiunlaishan (including its branch - the Jiajin Mountains). South of Qiunlaishan, the habitat becomes fragmented. It passes between the snow-covered Mount Gunga and Mount Emei, revered by Buddhists, ending at the small Xiaoxianling ridge[11][12].

Big pandas have unusual front paws - with a "big toe" and five ordinary toes; "thumb", which is actually a modified sesamoid bone of the wrist, allows you to deftly manage even thin bamboo shoots. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould devoted the article "The Panda's Thumb" to the origin of this "sixth finger", which became the title of his collection of works on evolution.

The only modern species of the genus Ailuropoda of the subfamily Ailuropodinae. Giant pandas live in the mountainous regions of central China: Sichuan, southern Gansu and Shaanxi. Since the second half of the 20th century, the panda has become something of a national emblem of China.