How do giant pandas get by on a diet that consists almost entirely of bamboo? They manage to expend only 38% of the energy typical of animals their size, new research shows. Scientists in China made detailed measurements of the energy used by five pandas in captivity and three more living in the wild.
They did this by injecting the animals with a dose of 'doubly labeled water' - which is enriched with certain isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen - and then taking a series of blood samples over the next two weeks to track the rate at which it was eliminated from their bodies.
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