Panda Bears in Australia?

We began our hunt for Panda Bears in Australia this morning. The first thing we did was to find a picture of a Panda Bear.

With her map of Australia in hand, Selena guessed that we would find Panda Bears in the Northern Territory. Now we were off to learn all we could learn.

We researched Panda Bears, (Now I hid the exact location of where they are found from Selena) to discover all the facts we could about them. They are carnivorous, which struck many questions from Selena, such as “If they are meat eaters then why do they eat bamboo?” We read on to discover that they are considered carnivorous due to having the digestive and teeth features of the carnivorous animals. They do eat small birds and fish. However, 99% of their diet does consist of bamboo, along with other grasses and some fruits.

We then looked to see if bamboo grew in Australia. Simply we found out that yes, bamboo does grown in the far North parts of Australia. Now we had to figure out if this meant that Panda Bears lived in these regions as well. Our search brought us to a discussion on what living in the wild, and living in a man made habitat meant. Selena finally concluded that there are Panda Bears in Australia, but they would not be found in the wild, but in zoos.

She quickly told me, “Mama I must have been thinking about the other bear…what are they called?” I asked her, if she was thinking of the Koala Bear? She quickly corrected herself and said yes, that is the one she was thinking of so next week we will be off on a Koala Bear hunt.

Panda Bears

By Selena

Panda Bears are in the wild in China.

We see Panda Bears in zoos.

Panda bears eat bamboo.

Panda bears live in zoos in Australia.

The End

Yes, Selena was a little disappointed, but she did learn a lot, and I think mostly she learned that while we make hypothesis, sometimes they do not always test out to be the way we think.