What do pandas eat? The giant and red panda diet

Published 8 October 2026 · Last updated 8 October 2026 · By the PandasWise team

Both pandas are bamboo specialists. About 99% of a giant panda's diet is bamboo, and it eats every above ground part of the plant, spending 10 to 16 hours a day at it. Red pandas get about 95% of their food from bamboo but pick only the leaf tips and shoots. Neither digests bamboo well, so both eat large amounts and save energy wherever they can.

What giant pandas eat

Bamboo is essentially the whole menu. A giant panda sits upright, grips stems with its five digits and the pseudo thumb, peels away the tough outer layer of the stalk with its teeth and crushes the inner tissue with broad molars. It also strips leaves off the stems, wads them up and eats them. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance notes giant pandas have also been seen eating grasses, bulbs, fruits, some insects, and even rodents and carrion, but these are a tiny share of the diet.

In the wild, giant pandas need forest with at least two kinds of bamboo nearby. Having more than one species matters because bamboos flower only rarely, then flower together over large areas and die, taking years to grow back. After a mass flowering in the Min Mountains in the mid 1970s, at least 138 giant pandas starved. A second bamboo species acts as a backup food supply. See panda habitat.

How much bamboo does a giant panda eat?

Sources give different numbers, and the differences are mostly about which part of the plant is in the mouth:

• WWF: about 26 to 84 pounds (roughly 12 to 38 kg) a day, "depending on what part of the bamboo they are eating".
• Smithsonian's National Zoo: 70 to 100 pounds (roughly 32 to 45 kg) a day.

Watery new shoots weigh far more per mouthful than dry leaves, so a panda eating shoots in spring shifts a much larger mass of food than one eating leaves in winter. We break this down in how much bamboo does a giant panda eat a day?

Living on an energy budget

A giant panda's gut is short and simple, much closer to a carnivore's than a cow's, so much of what it eats passes straight through. It copes by eating a lot and by spending very little energy. A 2015 study in Science measured daily energy expenditure in captive giant pandas at only about 38 percent of the value expected for a mammal of their size (about 45 percent in wild pandas). The researchers linked this to low physical activity, low thyroid hormone levels and reduced sizes of several vital organs. In practice: pandas eat, rest, and move slowly. This low energy lifestyle is also why they do not hibernate; see do pandas hibernate?

What red pandas eat

Bamboo makes up about 95 percent of a red panda's diet, but it eats very differently from a giant panda:

• Selective. A red panda's habitat may contain dozens of bamboo species, but it chooses one or two of the most nutritious and eats leaf tips and tender shoots rather than woody stems.
• One leaf at a time. It grasps a stem with its forepaws and shears off chosen leaves with its mouth. One study found females ate about 20,000 leaves in a day.
• Large share of body weight. Red pandas digest only about 24 percent of the bamboo they eat, so they need 20 to 30 percent of their body weight a day, about 1 to 2 kg.
• Seasonal extras. Fruit in summer, acorns, flowers, roots, succulent grasses, insects and grubs, and occasionally eggs, small birds and small mammals.

Like raccoons, red pandas often dip a paw into water to drink.

What zoos feed pandas

Zoos build diets around fresh bamboo. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance offers its giant pandas several hundred pounds of fresh bamboo every day, grown from nearly a dozen species on six acres of dedicated land. At the Smithsonian's National Zoo, red pandas get bamboo, seasonal bamboo shoots and leaf eater biscuits, with fruit such as apples, grapes, bananas and blueberries as enrichment treats. Keeping a steady supply of the right bamboo is a major cost of housing pandas.

Giant vs red panda diet at a glance