How vicious are pandas?
The Panda Bear of China is well-known and the focus of intense conservation efforts. It is the most vegetarian (though Pandas do like meat and will rarely raid livestock) of the bears and lives almost entirely on bamboo. This is the most endangered of all bears (no more than 1,000 are alive in the world) and its future is guarded. Beaurocratic bungling on the part of the mostly well-intentioned Chinese has greatly contributed to this sad state, but recently there have been a lot of improvements. In the wild Pandas are gentle and shy, but they tend to be resentful and dangerous in captivity. They have a bad reputation among zookeepers, who never-the-less regard them as the greatest possible prize. Despite their limited life-style, they have high intelligence like other bears. They are the bear least like the others.
