Giant pandas have a carnivorous digestive system, yet they eat nothing but bamboo all day and every day. They have a simple stomach, not like the ruminants that have four chambered stomach for fermentation with the help of bacteria. Their small intestine are short. How do they survive?
Some suggestions may be found in this study:
Article Obligate herbivory in an ancestrally carnivorous lineage: Th...
I find the following paper relating the gut microbiota to its bamboo diet:
Article Metagenomic Study Suggests That the Gut Microbiota of the Gi...
The authors find that the giant panda hosts a bear-like gut microbiota distinct from those of herbivores mammals. Their results indicate that the giant panda is not specialized to digest cellulose and hemicellulose from its bamboo diet, so has to increase food intake to compensate for the gut microbiome functions.
Giant pandas is eat leave, stem and shoots of bamboo to meet their energy. It may 12 36 kg/ day and 1% comes from other plant and meet. I thinks stomach of that animal has provided by excellent enzymes that digested their food and give this animal strength immune system. it may be reason.
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