Why don't we have panda bears?

When I was kid, I dreamed of working in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to take care of panda bears. It was just an influence brought by an american movie. When I went to school for my tertiary education, I was fond of calling myself panda eyes whenever I spend sleepless nights to study Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy under Dr. Ruth Gamboa.

Why don't we have panda bears here in the Philippines?

Grade school teachers explain that CONDITIONS are not favorable for pandas to live in our tropical country. Explanation beyond this term CONDITIONS is left to the innocent mind of gradeschoolers. I know, based on the american movie, that panda bears eat bamboo - we have bamboos here in the Philippines!


With this in mind, let us put CONDITIONS and RESOURCES into place. With conditions, I mean PHYSICAL CONDITIONS and with resources, we refer to AVAILABILITY OF RESOURCES.

photo was taken in Bohol way back 2006. it was a biologist's dream - to see tarsiers (one of the smallest primates on earth)

Physical Conditions are physicochemical features of the environment which are not consumed nor used up by the activities of organisms (Townsend et. al, 2008). These include:

1. temperature

2. humidity

3. pH (power of Hydrogen)

Resources ,on the other hand, may be biotic or abiotic components of the environment. In contrast with conditions, resources are consumed for organisms growth and development. These include:

1. solar radiation

2. carbon dioxide

3. water

4. mineral nutrients

The key indicators whether one is a CONDITION or a RESOURCE are:

a. Is it consumable? YES - resource; NO - condition

b. Will it still be available to another consumer? YES - condition; NO - resource

Let us entertain two of the two given examples: temperature and solar radiation.

Temperature induce a range of physiological responses in organisms. (physiological = characteristic appropriate for an individual's normal functioning). Suppose two butterflies live in an area where the temperature is around 26 degrees Celsius. Do you think one butterfly can consume the temperature? Will this 26 degrees Celsius be available to the other butterfly?

Solar radiation is important to photosynthetic organisms. Suppose two plants thrive on a forest floor. One is a narra tree while the other one is Mimosa pudica (makahiya). These two needs solar radiation in order for their photosynthesis to occur (to produce food). Narra grows taller than makahiya, hence, having its leaves in the atmosphere, it could catch solar radiation. And this solar radiation is USED by the tree to do photosynthetic activities. The makahiya lives under the shade of the narra tree. Do you think the used solar radiation will still be available for the makahiya under the narra tree?

Resources, because it is consummable, may run out (Solar radiation may not run out as long as the sun shines in the area; other resources such as those for food is feared to run out). Because of organisms' need for resources for their survival, growth, and development, a relationship among organisms is formed - it could be competition for these resoruces.

Going back to our panda bear- we may have bamboo plants here in the Philippines. It is a resource for panda bears. However, conditions in our country, specifically the heat (temperature), may not be "healthy" for panda bears. Their thick fur will work at their great disadvantage when they are in the tropics.

In order to survive, organisms could do any of the three: AVOID, TOLERATE, or SPECIALIZE. Panda bears could tolerate the high temperature in the Philippines. However, tolerance comes with increased expenditirue of energy. Or, they could specialize by having thin fur instead of the designed dense fur in response to the cold Chinese sub-tropical climate. (This brings us to the realization that keeping animals in captivity is tantamount to being "inhuman")