Giant panda, with a distinctive black and white coat, is the most iconic national treasure in China. The animal needs 4,300 to 5,500 kilocalories of food per day to survive, the equivalent of twenty bowls of rice or twenty hamburgers for humans. Their daily menu consists almost entirely of leaves, stems, and shoots of various bamboo species. Since bamboo contains very little nutritional value, pandas must eat 12 to 38kg of bamboos every day to meet their energy needs. Only about 1% of their diet is made up of other plants and meat.

Giant pandas are generally solitary that each adult has a well-defined home range. Encounters are rare outside the brief mating season in spring between March and May. Giant pandas reach sexual maturity at about 7.5 years old and they will attract their mate with scent-marking and bleating calls. Gestation takes about 95 to 160 days and wild pandas normally give birth to a single young. Tiny newborn giant pandas are pink in colour with short white hair, and weigh about 100g, which is about 1/900 the size of their mother. When they grow up, they can weigh up to about 100kg which is 1,000 times heavier than when they were born.

Giant panda cubs rely on its mother's care for a relatively long period after birth. Cubs acquire survival skills during this period, including walking and foraging through different seasons and landscapes. Giant panda leaves its mother at 3 years old and continue to roam until they find a suitable place to build their territories after gaining independence.