RED PANDAS

Physical description: The red panda has reddish brown fur with distinct white marks on its   face and tail. It has a very long fluffy tail and small ears. Its whiskers are white and long.
Lifespan: 8 to 12 years is the average but can live to be 15 years old.
Communication: Squeaks, chattering noises, chipmunk like sounds.
Size: Weight is 8 to 12 pounds. Length is 20 to 24 inches.
Weight: 12 to 20 lbs (5.4 to 9 kg)
Social behavior: Solitary except during mating.
Conservation status: Endangered due to loss of habitat.
Population: Exact information difficult to obtain, estimated to be under 2400.
Predators: Snow leopards, martens.
Breeding frequency: 1 or 2 years.
Protection status: Endangered

DIET--
Bamboo is the main diet of the red panda and is abundant in its natural habitat. However it will also eat a variety of other foods such as fruits, nuts, eggs, flowers, and seeds.
Information from their droppings reveal additional diet facts, such as their taste for other prey such as rodents and small birds.
Red panda cubs eat bamboo until they are mature enough to expand their diet. Their bamboo ranges are endangered and threaten the life style of this unique species.

HABITAT--
The red panda lives, eats, and raises its babies in forest mountain terrains. Its habitat range includes central China, Nepal, Myanmar(Burma), and Bhutan. Precise information on their habitat distribution is not known since wild population facts are difficult to gather.

REPRODUCTION--
Breeding season is in the late fall through winter. The gestation period is about four months. Baby red pandas are born in an average litter size of one to four babies and are born in the late spring and summer.
They build a nest or use hollow tree trunks or small caves to give birth to their newborn. The mother red panda takes care of her cubs until they reach adulthood when the next mating season begins.
After birth adulthood is reached in 16 to 18 months. At 18 months both male and female are ready to mate and repeat the reproduction process.


The red panda is dwarfed by the black-and-white giant that shares its name. These pandas typically grow to the size of a house cat, though their big, bushy tails add an additional 18 inches (46 centimeters). The pandas use their ringed tails as wraparound blankets in the chilly mountain heights.
The red panda shares the giant panda's rainy, high-altitude forest habitat, but has a wider range. Red pandas live in the mountains of Nepal and northern Myanmar (Burma), as well as in central China.
These animals spend most of their lives in trees and even sleep aloft. When foraging, they are most active at night as well as in the gloaming hours of dusk and dawn.
Red pandas have a taste for bamboo but, unlike their larger relatives, they eat many other foods as well—fruit, acorns, roots, and eggs. Like giant pandas, they have an extended wrist bone that functions almost like a thumb and greatly aids their grip.
They are shy and solitary except when mating. Females give birth in the spring and summer, typically to one to four young. Young red pandas remain in their nests for about 90 days, during which time their mother cares for them. (Males take little or no interest in their offspring.)
The red panda has given scientists taxonomic fits. It has been classified as a relative of the giant panda, and also of the raccoon, with which it shares a ringed tail. Currently, red pandas are considered members of their own unique family—the Ailuridae.
Red pandas are endangered, victims of deforestation. Their natural space is shrinking as more and more forests are destroyed by logging and the spread of agriculture.

PANDA

Giant pandas are black and white bears that live in temperate-zone bamboo forests in central China. Among the best recognized—but rarest—animals in the world, they have come to symbolize endangered species and conservation efforts. As few as 1,600 giant pandas survive in the mountain forests of central China. More than 300 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world; most of these pandas are in China.

Giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are at the National Zoo under a Giant Panda Cooperative Research and Breeding Agreement, signed in January 2011, between the Zoo and the China Wildlife Conservation Association. This extends the Zoo’s giant panda program through 2015. Mei and Tian are the focus of an ambitious research, conservation, and breeding program designed to preserve this endangered species.


Size--
About the size of an American black bear, giant pandas stand between two and three feet tall at the shoulder (on all four legs), and reach four to six feet long. Males are larger than females, weighing up to 250 pounds in the wild. Females rarely reach 220 pounds.

Habitat--
Giant pandas live in broadleaf and coniferous forests with a dense understory of bamboo, at elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet. Torrential rains or dense mist throughout the year characterizes these forests, often shrouded in heavy clouds.

Life Span--
Scientists are not sure how long giant pandas live in the wild, but they are sure it is shorter than lifespans in zoos. Chinese scientists have reported zoo pandas as old as 35.

Diet--
A wild giant panda’s diet is almost exclusively (99 percent) bamboo. The balance consists of other grasses and occasional small rodents or musk deer fawns. In zoos, giant pandas eat bamboo, sugar cane, rice gruel, a special high-fiber biscuit, carrots, apples, and sweet potatoes.

Social Structure--
Adult giant pandas are generally solitary, but they do communicate periodically through scent marks, calls, and occasional meetings. Offspring stay with their mothers from one and a half to three years.

KILLER WHALES(ORCA)

Fast Facts :-
Type:Mammal
Diet:Carnivore
Average life span in the wild:50 to 80 years
Size:23 to 32 ft (7 to 9.7 m)
Weight:Up to 6 tons (5,443 kg)
Group name:Pod


Size:
The average male orca grows to 23 feet long and weighs 7 to 10 tons. Females average 21 feet long and weigh 4 to 6 tons.

LIFESPAN:
Orcas live 30 to 50 years in the wild.

RANGE:
Found in all oceans of the world, orcas are most common in the Arctic and Antarctic and are often spotted off the west coast of the United States and Canada.

HABITAT:
Orcas are found in both coastal waters and open ocean.

OFFSPRING:
Orca gestation is 13 to 16 months. A calf is born in autumn weighing almost 400 pounds and measuring up to 7 feet in length.


Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world's most powerful predators. They feast on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even whales, employing teeth that can be four inches (ten centimeters) long. They are known to grab seals right off the ice. They also eat fish, squid, and seabirds.

Though they often frequent cold, coastal waters, orcas can be found from the polar regions to the Equator.
Killer whales hunt in deadly pods, family groups of up to 40 individuals. There appear to be both resident and transient pod populations of killer whales. These different groups may prey on different animals and use different techniques to catch them. Resident pods tend to prefer fish, while transient pods target marine mammals. All pods use effective, cooperative hunting techniques that some liken to the behavior of wolf packs.
Whales make a wide variety of communicative sounds, and each pod has distinctive noises that its members will recognize even at a distance. They use echolocation to communicate and hunt, making sounds that travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back, revealing their location, size, and shape.

Killer whales are protective of their young, and other adolescent females often assist the mother in caring for them. Mothers give birth every three to ten years, after a 17-month pregnancy.

Orcas are immediately recognizable by their distinctive black-and-white coloring and are the intelligent, trainable stars of many aquarium shows. Killer whales have never been extensively hunted by humans.

Cheetah

Social behavior:-
Unlike other animals which have gender specific names - 'bull' and 'cow' for elephants; 'rooster' and 'hen' for chickens - humans apply the name 'cheetah' to both sexes. Cheetah in the wild may be divided into 2 groups: the family group/females and males.


Females/Family Group:-
Young females usually occupy the same range as their mother although ALL females are solitary except when they have a litter. Average female home ranges extend to 833 square kilometers (322 square miles). A female raises her cubs alone since adult male and female cheetahs mix only to mate. The average life span of wild radio-collared female cheetahs is 6.9 years which compares to 11.7 years for females in captivity.


Males:-
Only rarely will a male cheetah live alone. Generally 2 or 3 cheetah males, often brothers, will form a coalition. This small group will live and hunt together for life and usually claims a large area or range which may overlap several female territories. The average size of male territories is 37.4 square kilometers (14.4 square miles).  Young males seek out an area at a great distance from their parent; sometimes as far as 482 kilometers (300 miles).


Food & Hunting:-

A cheetah is carnivorous and eats a variety of small animals. While most cats are nocturnal predators, the cheetah is primarily diurnal, hunting in early morning and late afternoon. Since it depends on sight rather than smell, it likes to scan the countryside from a tree limb or the top of a termite mound. Other big cats chase only a few hundred meters: the cheetah chases 3.4 miles (5500 meters) at an average speed of 45 miles per hour (72 kilometers per hour). Stalking is as important as the fast sprint: usually it will creep within 50 yards (46 meters) of an intended victim before the final acceleration. Full sprints last about 20 seconds and almost never exceed 1 full minute. If it succeeds in catching an animal the cheetah will suffocate it by clamping the animal's windpipe, sometimes holding a clamp as long as 5 minutes. Very small animals like hares are killed by a simple bite through the skull. But whatever the meal - large or small -  cheetah eats quickly for if challenged it will most often lose. Cheetahs have unusually clean eating habits: they do not return to their kill nor do they eat carrion; they leave the skin, bones and entrails of their prey. At 6 weeks the young are strong enough to follow the hunt and when they are about 6 months old the mother will capture live prey for them to practice killing.

Habitat:-

Not so long ago cheetahs inhabited an area from North Africa to India, but they are now commonly found only in sub-Saharan Africa (south of the Sahara Desert). Their range includes sparse sub-desert, steppe (a treeless plain), medium and long-grass plains. They need an environment with bushes, tall grass and other large plants in order to hide from predators.