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Children tour the Chengdu Giant Panda Museum, the world's first interactive-experience museum with a giant panda theme, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Wednesday.
Do you love giant pandas but wonder why they have a sixth thumb, what it's called and why they are herbivores?
The answers are readily available at the Chengdu Giant Panda Museum, which opened at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, on Wednesday.
Zhang Zhihe, deputy director of the Chengdu management bureau of the Giant Panda National Park, said that with a built area of 7,179 square meters and a display area of 4,342 sq m, it is believed to be the world's first interactive-experience museum with a giant panda theme.
Zhang was head of the Chengdu panda base when arrangements for the museum's exhibits started to be made in August 2019.
The museum has exhibits about the history, habits and plight of the giant panda and efforts to rescue the species from extinction.
Visitors to the museum will learn that Jean Pierre Armand David, a French priest and naturalist, was the first Western explorer to discover and document giant pandas in 1869.
During the 12 years he lived in China, he named and introduced 68 new bird species to the West, as well as over 100 insects and other mammals, including milu, also known as Pere David's deer, and the golden snub-nosed monkey.
He sent a giant panda specimen back to Henri Milne Edwards at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, who, in 1870, published a paper declaring the giant panda a new species that eventually came to be called Ailuropoda melanoleuca, Zhang said.
In the past, giant pandas were most likely carnivores and later became specialist bamboo-eaters.
"A major reason giant pandas focus their dietary efforts on the laborious task of consuming bamboo is simply that there has always been an abundant supply," Zhang said.
With their very particular diet, pandas have, over time, developed special physical features that help them process and consume bamboo.
One of the most noticeable and helpful adaptions is an elongated wrist bone. Called the radial sesamoid, it acts as a sort of sixth thumb that allows pandas to grab and hold objects, Zhang said.
"Pandas use this elongated bone, or pseudo-thumb, primarily to grasp, break off and process bamboo, but they can also use this handy 'thumb' to hold other items that might interest them," he said.
During the Pleistocene Epoch, which began about 1.6 million years ago, pandas enjoyed a wide distribution from northern Myanmar to eastern China, and even as far north as the region around Beijing.
Today, pandas survive in just six mountain ranges in the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, with their habitat totaling about 23,050 square kilometers.
"The six mountain ranges are the Qinling, Minshan, Qionglai, Daxiangling, Xiaoxiangling and Liangshan mountains," Zhang said.
The largest single area still remaining for wild giant pandas is the Minshan Mountain range, which covers an area of 9,603 sq km.
The six areas are highly fragmented due to human habitation and activities. With most valleys inhabited by humans, many panda populations are isolated in narrow belts of bamboo no more than 1,000 to 1,200 meters wide.
"Therefore, their actual geographical range is much smaller than generally depicted on maps," Zhang said.

文章摘自人民网英文版

周三，在四川省成都市，世界上第一家以大熊猫为主题的互动体验博物馆——成都大熊猫博物馆正式开馆。这所博物馆展出了有关大熊猫的历史、习性和困境，以及拯救大熊猫所做出的努力。参观者将可以了解到，第一位西方探险家把一只大熊猫标本送回给巴黎国家自然历史博物馆的亨利·米尔恩·爱德华兹（Henri Milne Edwards），其后在1870年发表了一篇论文，宣称大熊猫是一个新物种，并最终命名这一物种为大熊猫。
除此之外，最能引起人们注意的，便是在过去大熊猫很可能是食肉动物，后来才成为专门吃竹子的动物。而由于它们特殊的饮食习惯，随着时间的推移，大熊猫形成了特殊的身体特征，来帮助它们加工和食用竹子。其中一个最明显和有益的适应便是拉长腕骨。
最后，博物馆还会介绍大熊猫的生存历史。从大约160万年前开始的更新世时期，分布广泛横跨缅甸北部到中国东部，甚至北至北京周边地区，再到如今，仅在四川、陕西和甘肃省的总面积约为23050平方公里的六座山脉中栖息。由于人类的居住和活动，这六个地区高度分散，许多熊猫种群被隔离在宽度不超过1000至1200米的狭窄竹带中。因此，它们的实际地理范围比地图上通常描绘的要小得多。