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Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images

Recently, the Red Star News reporter learned from the Laohegou area of the Giant Panda National Park that an infrared camera in the area captured the precious pictures of the giant panda and the black bear eating the same antelope carcass before and after. Among them, the appearance of giant pandas is more than ten days ago, that is, on May 13.

"The black bear came three times, which was expected; the giant panda came once, which was very surprising." Liu Xiaogeng, head of the Laohegou Nature Conservation Center, said that infrared cameras take both photos and videos, and you can clearly see the pictures of giant pandas and black bears eating.

Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images

Giant pandas gnaw on bones, and black bears roll while eating

On March 20 of this year, in a ditch called Dry Ditch in the precinct, rangers at the Conservation Center found the carcass of an antelope, where rangers installed infrared cameras. On May 16, when the rangers passed by the site, they were pleasantly surprised to find that the camera had captured more than 200 photos and more than ten videos, including pictures of giant pandas and black bears coming to "eat". This black bear is even more "three gu maolu", appearing in the place three times on April 30, May 4, and May 10 to eat antelope carcasses. "Three hundred pounds should be there, just a big one." He Jun, the ranger who collected the camera, said that the black bear should have smelled the carcass of antelope.

Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images

Remnants of antelope carcasses

Not only did he eat, but the black bear ate while holding the food and rolling. Compared with the black bear, the giant panda is a little more "Sven", but there are also pictures of it holding bones and gnawing, changing the image of the past vegetarian. "Wild giant pandas mainly feed on bamboo and will hardly prey on other animals, but when other animal carcasses are found, they will also eat a little, and giant pandas are also omnivorous animals." Liu Xiaogeng said that from the video, the giant panda is not small, about two hundred pounds, it should smell the smell. The altitude is about 1800 meters, and the giant pandas live at an altitude of 2600 meters for a long time. This season, giant pandas are still rare in the area.

Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images

The giant panda was captured by the camera

At the scene on the 16th, only a little bone and hair remained in the body part of the antelope carcass, the head was relatively intact, and the horns were clearly visible. Liu Xiaogeng introduced that the antelope is middle-aged and elderly and should die of illness. In addition to giant pandas and black bears eating at the place, the camera also filmed birds such as red-billed blue magpies and large-billed crows coming to share food. The best way to protect nature is to avoid human intervention, and the carcasses of antelopes will be eaten by other animals and returned to nature in other invisible ways. Therefore, after the patrol team finds out, they will not interfere too much, but will install infrared cameras in time to record the process.

Giant pandas visited last year, and behind the frequent encounters is a large number of mountain patrols

The Laohegou area of the Giant Panda National Park is located in Gaocun Township, Angu Town, Pingwu County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province. It takes about an hour to drive from Pingwu County to the site. Laohegou is the first social welfare protected area in China, and it is a case of non-governmental organization management under the supervision of the government. The Laohegou area has been transformed from a forest farm with stopped logging into a natural protected area, with 14 giant pandas and Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkeys, antelopes, forest musk, Asian golden cats and other national first-class protected animals, as well as national first-class protected plants such as yew trees and tung trees. In the past 10 years, the animal population in the area has been greatly restored, and the animal encounter rate has increased greatly, and just last year, rangers photographed giant pandas visiting the wafang protection base on the Laohegou. During this year's New Year's Holiday for a month, an antelope "squatted" every day at the old hegou shaba sub-base.

Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images

The camera captured the black bear

In Liu Xiaogeng's view, whether it is face-to-face or infrared cameras and frequent encounters with various wild animals, it is both accidental and inevitable. It is said that it is accidental, because some rangers may not have seen wild pandas in their lives, and it is inevitable that it is because the natural environment is getting better and better, the range of animal activities is getting more and more, and the probability of humans and animals meeting is definitely getting higher and higher. "There is no secret, it is to do the most basic patrol and insist on doing a lot of it." Liu Xiaogeng said that the Old River Gully Patrol Team practiced the basic skills hard and strengthened the three basic homework of the rangers "going up the mountain, going to the countryside, and sweeping the toilet". The precinct is divided into 1 km multiplied by 1 km for a total of 176 management units, requiring each ranger to walk through each management unit every six months, and in 2020, the 16 rangers of Laohegou have accumulated more than 10,000 kilometers of patrol mileage. In order to really motivate everyone to do it, the bonus part of the salary of the rangers in the Old River Ditch area is directly linked to the number of patrol kilometers.

In addition to hard work, in the past 10 years, the Laohegou Conservation Center has deployed 150 infrared cameras in an area of 110 square kilometers, and the cumulative number of animal photos taken has exceeded 1 million, and it has increased year by year. At the same time, the protection center has built a data platform to summarize and summarize the collected photos, videos and other data. "With the platform in place, what we have to do now is to keep going in and collect a lot of basic data from nature to lay a solid foundation for big data analysis in the future." Liu Xiaogeng said.

Red Star News reporter Lin Cong photo report Some pictures and videos according to the Old River Gully area of the Giant Panda National Park

Edited by Chai Chang

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Black bears and giant pandas eat the same antelope carcass before and after! Infrared cameras capture precious images