A Red Panda and his favorite food. Photo: F27707 / Pixabay
A new study from North Carolina State University (NCSU), the Smithsonian and Duke University reveals a surprising similarity between Red Pandas, giant pandas and lemurs.
MAIN DISH: BAMBOO
Although these species evolved separately over the millions of years of evolution, they share a total of 48 gut microbes.
Lemurs live also almost exclusively on bamboo. Photo: Paul Albertella from Manchester, UK (Red-bellied lemur Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
One reason for this might be that all three species feed almost exclusively on bamboo only.
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Some highlights of the study at NCSU’s website.
The full version is available at Springer.
