Bears

A record 16 giant pandas have been born in captivity this year, the head of China’s panda breeding programme says.

They include twins born in Japan and a cub born in California – to mothers lent to zoos by China.

Threatened with extinction in the wild, captive breeding programmes, including artificial insemination, are seen as vital to save giant pandas.

Only about 1,000 of the animals remain in the wild, feeding on bamboo in the Sichuan mountains of south-west China.

Did You Know?
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A total of 29 pandas
were inseminated naturally or
artificially in the spring and
they gave birth to 19 pandas in the autumn,
of which two were stillborn and one
failed to survive, said Zhang Zhihe,
head of China’s Giant Panda Breeding Technology Committee.

The Kinkajou a mammal which is other known as The Honey Bear, Sugar Bear, or the Cat-Monkey it lives in the rain forest and is of the Family Procyonidae related to the Olingo, Ringtail, Cacomistle, Raccoon, and Coati. It is the only member of the of the Genus Potos.

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The Kinkajou is Native to Central America and South America , this Aboreal mammal is not particularly Rare thou it is in Seldom because of it is Nocturnal habits. Sometimes the Kinkajou is mistaken for a monkey or Ferrets.

The oldest living kinkajou (Potos flavus) in captivity is Huggy Bear, who turned 27 years 6 months old in January 2004 and belongs to Sonja Pedersen (USA) of Holiday, Florida, USA.

The Giant Panda is only found in China and Japan due to its large supplie of Bamboo, Pandas Though belonging to the order Carnivora family, the panda has a diet which is 99 percent bamboo. Pandas may eat other foods such as honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, bananas and small insect found on Bamboo.

The Giant Panda has a black-and-white coat. Adults measure around 1.5 m long and around 75 cm tall at the shoulder. Males are 10-20% larger than females. Males can weigh up to 115 kg. Females are generally smaller than males, and can occasionally weigh up to 100 kg. Giant Pandas live in mountainous regions, such as Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Tibet.

Excerpt from: news.nationalgeographic.com/news

June 13, 2006—Perhaps not since the Cowardly Lion has an animal’s appearance been so at odds with its attitude.

On June 4 a black bear wandered into a West Milford, New Jersey, back yard, was confronted by a 15-pound (7-kilogram) tabby cat … and fled up a neighbor’s tree. Hissing at the base of the tree, Jack the clawless cat kept the bear at bay for about 15 minutes, then ran him up another tree after an attempted escape.

Finally, Jack’s owner, Donna Dickey, called the cat inside, and the timorous trespasser disappeared back into the woods.

“He doesn’t want anybody in his yard,” Dickey said of Jack in an interview with the Newark Star Ledger.

The Black Bear is a largest bear in the world they are mostly found in Canada and Alaska south into Mexico ,the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Height and Weight: The black bear is about 1.5 m long. Females weigh between 40 and 180 kg while males weigh between 50 and 400 kg , Cubs usually weigh between 200 and 450g at birth.

Food: Black bears are omnivores. They eat a wide variety of foods, relying most heavily on grasses, herbs, fruits, and mast. They also feed on carrion and insects such as

carpenter ants
yellow jackets
bees
termites

they also eat larger prey such as rodents brids (if found on floor) foxs rabbits fish and other animal as well as vegatarian list below