Chapter 119 Qinling Giant Pandas (V)
Winter comes early in the mountains and forests. When Sesame Glutinous Rice Balls has just grown its third baby tooth, the temperature on the hillside of the Qinling Mountains has already dropped below zero.
Qinling Mountains is the dividing line between China's subtropical and warm temperate zones, with the lowest temperature in winter ranging from -10℃ to -20℃.
For Yu Yijun, who has traveled to the North and South Poles of the blue planet and experienced the freezing cold of Yellowstone Park at minus 30 or 40 degrees Celsius, Gun Gun is still fearless even in the coldest time of Qinling Mountains... No wonder!
"Ah!"
The cold-fearing little bear hid in a tree hole, sneezing and shivering.
The temperature had just dropped below zero, and I was wearing a thick fur coat and weighed several dozen pounds, so why was I too cold to face the strong wind?
In fact, Yu Yiyun is not the only bear who is unwilling to face the strong wind.
Before winter comes, black bears in the Qinling Mountains work hard to eat and gain weight in order to hide in caves to avoid the wind and snow.
Giant pandas, whose staple food is bamboo, have limited nutritional intake and the energy stored in their bodies is not enough to sustain them throughout the winter without leaving their dens to forage for food.
Therefore, even in the coldest winter, giant pandas have to brave frost and snow for food.
Thinking about the coming cold winter, Yu Yiyun even began to envy the big black bears preparing for hibernation nearby.
Because the weather has been too cold recently, Yu Yijun hasn't gone out with Ziwei for several days.
When the red panda brings wild fruits to feed the sesame dumplings, it must put them into the tree hole in front of Qiqi.
Occasionally, Qi Qi would catch them red-handed. Before the wild fruits were fed into Sesame Dumpling's mouth, they would be robbed by Qi Qi first.
After being robbed three times in a row by her mother, Yu Yiyun learned her lesson and decided that she couldn't go on like this.
Having lived a life of hardship and exposure for six lifetimes, Yu Yiyun has enough experience in the wild.
He knew very well that as long as he consumed enough high-calorie foods, he would be able to fight the cold winter winds.
The problem is that with the full arrival of winter, almost all the plants on the Qinling Mountains have withered, leaving them bare in preparation for the winter.
Looking around, the only food the giant panda can find is bamboo and bamboo shoots.
Yu Yiyun eats bamboo shoots for ten hours every day, and the more she eats, the emptier she feels.
Even though Xiongxiong tried hard to eat, he still had the illusion of not having enough calories.
Mingming's ultimate ideal in his previous lives was to become a glutton who was never full.
Now that his wish has come true, Sesame Tangyuan still sighs every day while holding the bamboo shoots.
[Poor 250 hahahaha, are you tired of eating bamboo shoots? ]
[xswl, eating bamboo shoots at 250 yuan gave me a very strong taste of the class]
[Isn’t it? We work at least 10 hours a day, and we don’t get any holidays during festivals. Sometimes we eat less and have to get up in the middle of the night to work overtime.]
[There is nothing we can do. The fruits have all fallen in winter. Even red pandas have to eat bamboo every day.]
[Baby, hold on for another three months! In the spring, there will be plenty of wild fruits to eat! ]
[250 Hearing that such hard times would last for another three months, the sky seemed to be falling, hahahaha]
On the sixth day of Sesame Tangyuan's passive eating of bamboo shoots, Qi Qi finally felt that the baby was becoming more and more depressed.
At first, she couldn't figure out why Xiaotuanzi was sad.
Until one day, Qi Qi was chewing on bamboo and found Sesame Tangyuan sitting under the tree where he had picked chestnuts before, staring eagerly to see if there were any chestnuts that had slipped through the net.
Qi Qi finally realized that the baby was probably tired of eating bamboo.
She was a little confused. Why would someone get tired of bamboo, which is so delicious?
If you don't like Bashan bamboo, you can try another kind of bamboo.
Seeing his son becoming more and more depressed, Qi Qi finally couldn't bear it.
That night, Qi Qi, who was supposed to stay in the tree hole and sleep soundly, left the tree hole contrary to her usual behavior and searched around in the bamboo forest using her keen sense of smell.
After smelling the target scent, Qi Qi used his huge body to block the small cave and blew air into the cave with his mouth.
Yu Yiyun was sleeping soundly. When he heard the noise, he poked his round head out of the tree hole.
Giant pandas are highly myopic, but have more rods in their eyes that can control the brightness of light.
Therefore, pandas can often see more clearly at night than during the day.
Sesame glutinous rice balls watched their mother blow air, patted the soil near the hole with their paws, and drove out a fat bamboo rat.
Qi Qi was more agile than ever before. He quickly jumped up, pinned down the bamboo rat, and bit it to death with one bite.
Bamboo rats are large in size, weighing approximately 3 to 8 kilograms, and like to gnaw on bamboo roots.
Wild bamboo rats have the habit of hibernating. In order to survive the winter, the bamboo rat caught by Qi Qi fed itself so much that it became fat and its belly was bulging with three layers of folds.
Qiqi bit the bamboo rat to death, tore off its skin, and put it in front of Xiaotuanzi.
"Ahhh." Eat it, you greedy boy.
"babble?"
Yu Yiyun looked at the bamboo rat, then at her mother, and suddenly realized something.
Although giant pandas have been living on bamboo for tens of thousands of years.
But pandas belong to the order Carnivora and have a carnivore digestive system in their bodies.
The giant pandas living in the Qinling Mountains have an older genetic type than the Sichuan giant pandas and are closer to their carnivorous ancestors.
A photographer once captured wild giant pandas in Qinling Mountains gnawing on animal remains.
Countless facts have proved that Qinling giant pandas can eat meat!
Yu Yiyun, who had been eating a vegan diet for two months, finally reacted and looked up at the sky at a 45-degree angle, wanting to cry but without tears.
He took a bite of the bamboo rat and was so excited that he almost wanted to run around the bamboo forest.
"Eeyee!" Rourou!
"Yiyiyi!" It's so delicious!
Qiqi stared at Haodaer in confusion, not understanding his excitement.
Sometimes, when Qi Qi gets tired of eating bamboo, he will catch bamboo rats to try some meat.
But hunting bamboo rats is much more difficult than picking bamboo shoots, and Qi Qi is too lazy to put in so much effort, so he is not keen on it.
How could a panda just leave the bamboos all over the mountains uneaten and go to so much trouble to catch bamboo rats every day?
——It’s true.
Qi Qi only demonstrated it once, and the student learned how to make sesame dumplings on his own, unlocking the skill of catching bamboo rats.
Within two days, his skill in catching bamboo rats became better than Qi Qi's.
It was able to use its sharp claws to raid the bamboo rat's nest without disturbing the rat at all, allowing the rat to pass away peacefully.
With bamboo rats as a supplement to the menu, Yu Yiyun took in enough fat and finally didn't feel so cold anymore.
However, the days of enjoying the Rat Rat buffet every day did not last long.
The Qinling Mountains are at a high altitude, so winter comes earlier and more thoroughly than in cities.
At the end of November, the first snow fell on the Qinling Mountains and lasted for several days.
The white snow covered the entire mountain, blocking the scent of bamboo rats.
Yu Yiyun was unable to determine the location of the bamboo rat's hole through the thick snow, so he could only go back to working overtime and eating bamboo shoots every day.
The temperature in the mountains is low and the snow does not melt throughout the winter.
The little dumpling gnawed on bamboo shoots boringly for two days. The heat stored in the previous period was gradually lost, and the baby was so cold that he couldn't stand this hard life.
"Eeyore." Mommy, please stay here and don't move.
"Yiyi~" I went to find some meat to eat.
[Reverse Tiangang.jpg]
Qiqi had long been accustomed to Zaizai's bad habit of hanging out every now and then, and had no intention of trying to keep Zaizai from leaving alone.
Yu Yiyun stepped on the snow, leaving behind heavy footprints, and looked around in confusion at the vast whiteness.
So the question is, where can I find meat to eat?
Based on his knowledge of bears, the main prey of bears, apart from bamboo rats, is various fish.
Although there are no salmon in this area of the Qinling Mountains, there are plenty of plump fish in nearby rivers.
Fish fish!
Yu Yiyun, who was a seabird in her previous life, had tears of excitement on her face as she ran towards the river with her claws spread out.
As he ran to the small river near Qi Qi's territory, the smile on Yu Yijun's face slowly disappeared.
The river is relatively narrow, and due to heavy snow and low temperatures for several days, the river surface has frozen.
Yu Yiyun tried to step on the ice twice with his paws, but the ice was very thick and it was impossible for a little bear like him to clear it.
After having the meat, Sesame Rice Balls, which had been craving for meat, slowly walked upstream along the frozen river bank.
Every few steps, he stretched out his hands to test the thickness of the ice.
As the river widens, the ice becomes thinner.
In some sections of the river, only the two sides are frozen, while the middle is still flowing.
Yu Yiyun did not dare to risk walking on the ice and into the middle of the river, for fear that she would fall into the freezing water in the cold winter.
The weather is already cold, and then jumping into the water for a winter swim, I can’t even imagine how sour and refreshing the sesame dumplings would be.
He walked and stopped along the way and ate three meals of bamboo shoots along the way.
The day dawned and then turned dark again. Yu Yiyun didn't know how far she had walked.
Finally, the sound of gurgling water came from the front, and the river bank was not frozen.
Yu Yiyun noticed from the corner of her eye that the trees on both sides of the river formed a large area, with only a small area on the shore that could be passed through.
The stupid little bear, whose mind was full of 'catching fish', didn't give it any thought.
With 800-degree myopia, he naturally ignored the sign that he had planted himself:
'China South China Tiger Rewilding Experimental Area'
"Eeyee!"
Fish! Here I come!
The sesame dumplings followed the only gap in the river bank and happily crossed the boundary.
At the same time, the "Tiger Returns" team, which was monitoring the wintering of the South China tigers in real time, were so scared that they all rushed to the screen and screamed, which was even more deafening than when they discovered that the tiger cubs had broken into Mulan's territory.
"Help! What is that black and white thing!"
"I dare not open my eyes. I hope it is just my hallucination..."
"Open your eyes! Call the base next door and bring their panda back!"
"I'm going crazy! When we were pulling the net, we couldn't pull it along the river. We thought that it was a hundred kilometers away, and no matter how fast the pandas were, they couldn't swim along the river bank, and there were no bamboos growing on the bank."
"Well, I suddenly remembered something. The neighbor contacted us last month and said that their pandas were spending the winter in a remote location, less than 100 kilometers away from our base. I didn't take it seriously at the time, thinking that as long as I kept an eye on the tiger on the shore, it should be fine... right?"
"Look at the tiger on the shore. Do you dare to say that? Do you know which tiger is on the shore?"
The entire rewilding team answered in unison:
"Mountain King!"
The name "Shanjun" echoed in the duty room, and the team members collectively held their foreheads.
"Professor Yu is not here. How can we control the tiger? He doesn't have a collar and we don't know where it is..."
"There, over there." The girl pointed to a certain location above the screen with trembling fingers.
The tiger's hunting range today was particularly far, reaching the edge of its territory.
At this moment, it was squatting less than 3 kilometers away from the invading panda, slowly cleaning the blood from its face and claws, preparing to enjoy the hunted bison.
Yu Yiyun lay on the river bank and tried again and again, like a fisherman with only one hook left, but he didn't catch even a single fish scale.
The baby's stomach was rumbling with hunger and he was about to give up catching fish and go find some bamboo shoots to eat first.
Suddenly, a lingering fragrance wafted through the air.
The hungry little bear swallowed hard.
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