By Lizzie Buchen

updated 11:51 a.m. ET Aug. 5, 2008

The recent death of Ling-Ling, the only giant panda owned by Japan, sent the world into mourning. Everything about these giant teddy bears — their squat, furry bodies, their sad black eyes, their especially vulnerable babies (often compared to sticks of butter) — makes them ridiculously, scientifically cute. This, along with their dire status as a species, makes them a powerful symbol for the conservation movement as a whole.

But there’s another side of the panda’s tale. Pandas have been ridiculed for their decidedly non-bearlike vegetarian diets, their apparent lack of interest in — and aptitude for — sex, their tendency to spend the majority of their time sitting, eating, scratching, and defecating (about 40 times per day) — even for being, shall we say, plump. These rather "unfit" characteristics have made the giant panda a favorite animal of creationists, who argue that the panda’s survival proves the existence of God. How is it, they ask, that such a species could have "evolved" to be so poorly suited for survival and could have lasted these "alleged" tens of thousands of years without a little help from a higher power?

Vegetarians
One of the panda's curious adaptations is its remarkably inefficient diet. Like other bears, and like omnivores and carnivores, pandas have short digestive systems, making them ill suited for their preferred diet of fibrous, nutrient-poor bamboo. To obtain sufficient nutrients, pandas must eat almost a fourth of their weight in bamboo every day. Pandas also favor young bamboo sprouts, which have even less nutrition; if they eat only these, they must chomp down almost half of their weight daily.

But according to Megan Owen, a conservation specialist at the San Diego Zoo, there is a possible evolutionary explanation for the panda's seemingly foolish preference for bamboo: lack of competition. When pandas split off from the bear lineage about 3 million years ago, tasty and nutritious cuisine like meat, fruit, and nuts may have been difficult to obtain while bamboo was ubiquitous — a wide-open ecological niche. So there were two choices: Exert some serious effort to get the good stuff, or munch away on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of woody grasses.

The panda accommodated its vegetarianism with a few physical adaptations — enlarged chewing muscles (those adorable jowls), their famous "thumbs," and a slightly modified digestive system (though still far more similar to a carnivore's than to an herbivore's). But the most notable adaptations were behavioral. Pandas must minimize energy expenditure in every aspect of their lives: limiting locomotion and mating periods, having a low surface area-to-volume ratio (i.e., being fat) to conserve heat, and sleeping as much as possible. Energy conservation also explains their endearingly tiny and helpless young: According to Lisa Stevens of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, it is much more efficient to give birth to very small, undeveloped cubs and raise them externally on milk than to expend energy on their development internally.

Sex
The biggest argument for the intelligent design crowd is the panda’s mating habits. If natural selection drives the formation of species, how did an animal that needs porn, Viagra, and sexercise to mate ever make it? Pandas, IDists believe, are up against some serious hurdles when it comes to having sex: The male penis is disproportionately small, females seldom go into heat, and males do not instinctively know how to mate, among other problems.

Take, for example, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, the cherished panda couple of the Smithsonian National Zoo, whose relationship had been shaky since ever they were introduced in 1976. Hsing-Hsing failed at his early attempts to inseminate Ling-Ling — not much of a surprise, considering he tried to mate with her ear, wrist, and foot. The zoo then tried and failed at artificial insemination, after which it imported a male, Chia-Chia, from London to mate with Ling-Ling. Instead of mating with Ling-Ling, though, Chia-Chia mauled her. Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing eventually got better at sex, and Ling-Ling gave birth to five cubs between 1983 and 1989 — one who was stillborn, four who died within days.

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