揭露大熊猫的秘密生活

What do pandas get up to in the wild when they're not busy eating bamboo? That's the question researchers from China and America have been working on for the last two years. Our correspondent Jim Spellman takes a look now at how technology is helping shed light on the life of one of China's most secretive animals.

studying giant pandas is anything but easy.

There are only about 18-hundred of the elusive mammals in the wild - most of them confined to about 21-thousand square kilometres in southwestern China.

Pandas like the ones here at the National Zoo in Washington are huge attractions, but until now little has been known about how they spend their time in the wild. Now a new study is revealing how pandas travel, feed and interact with other pandas.

Five pandas in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province were fitted with GPS collars -- their movements tracked for two years.

The research was conducted by Michigan State University in the United States, working with researchers at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.

"Pandas are really interesting in the sense that they're very secretive. They don't like people and they live in these habitats that are very secluded and remote and also the vegetation in their habitat is very dense.So when we got this unique opportunity to get some GPS collars and put them on wild pandas, it was just so excited to say that we'd be able to follow them around remotely," Vanessa Hull, researcher with Michigan State University said.

Researchers were surprised to find that Pandas are not the solitary creatures previously thought. The pandas studied often spent time close to other pandas.

"We like to think of them as being in their own little world - they're own little bamboo path. But in reality, they're very much paying attention to what their neighbours are doing and even interacting directly," Vanessa said.

And their movements are far from random. The study revealed that pandas often return to a feeding area after bamboo-- the staple of the panda diet-- has a chance to regrow.

"So I think it's important to think in terms of that just for conservation and recognize that we need to be conserving areas that are large enough for these interactions to happen between pandas," Vanessa said.

Conservation efforts have led to a slow growth in panda populations. And researchers hope this new data will help better understand pandas as they face new challenges from changing habitats, climate change and human interactions.

"How people affect the panda habitat, how panda habitat affect the policies and how panda policy changes will affect people's behavior and how people behave will affect the panda behavior again, we are focused on these complex interactions. Panda, people and policies," Jack Liu with Michigan State University said.

Policies that could help pandas survive-- and even thrive.