You’re not likely to see a giant panda at your local gym any time soon, so it’s hard to say for certain how strong giant pandas really are.
We can’t measure their strength easily in KG or lbs with a bench press or squat, but we can tell some things about how strong they are from their animal family, body and behavior.
First of all the giant panda is a part of the bear family and nearly all bears are pretty darn strong, even when compared to other animals.
Bears are often apex predators in their environment or at the very least rarely have natural predators when fully grown, which tells you where they sit in relation to the rest of the animal kingdom.
Different kinds of bears have been obsered performing phenomenal feats of strength in both captivity and the wild, moving heavy objects with ease that the average human couldn’t even dream of budging.
Pandas might be a unique subspecies of bear, but they share the same impressive strength as other bears and are rarely challenged by other animals in the wild.
Unsurprisingly, giant pandas are big too. Don’t mistake their roly poly frames for fat either, panda bears are nearly all muscle under their thick fur.
With full grown males weighing in at around 300lbs, they have plenty of weight to throw around. Think how strong big NFL linemen get and then imagine that lineman is actually a wild bear. Scary stuff.
Giant pandas also engage in lots of behaviors that require strength, agility and power. The bears are excellent accidental acrobats, often tumbling and rolling during play and as they move around their mountainous homes.
They’re also capable climbers and strong swimmers, both of which require significant strength, especially when you weigh 300lbs.
Do pandas have strong jaws?
Absolutely, giant pandas have one of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom.
Don’t forget, the black and white bears spend over half their day eating bamboo, which is basically solid wood.
They’ve developed incredibly powerful jaws (and big flat teeth) to deal with the demands of their diet.
Large jaw muscles are one of the reasons the giant panda has such a big and round face.
Their bite can be compared to other bears (even large, heavier bears), big cats and even the hippopotamus.
Are giant pandas fast?
Pandas aren’t natural sprinters, or joggers, or really walkers if we’re being honest.
The bears like to spend most of their day sedentary if they can, moving only a bit to get to the next patch of bamboo.
They do this to conserve energy in the wild, where their bamboo diet leaves them lacking in nutrition.
Pandas are capable of moving quite quickly when they need to though, with recorded speeds of up to 20mph in the wild and in captivity.
That doesn’t make them slow, but in the animal kingdom it doesn’t exactly make them fast either.
Athletic humans can beat pandas over short distances as can many other mammals of a similar size, like other bears or big cats.
The American black bear for example tops out at 30mph, nearly half as fast again as the giant panda.
It’s not often you see a panda move quickly, but here’s a short clip showing that they can hustle when they want to!
Are pandas strong swimmers?
Giant pandas don’t spend a lot of time in water in their natural habitat, but they are strong and capable swimmers when they need to be.
You’d expect as much from the bear family, all of whose members are safe and at home in water.
Though pandas won’t bother often as they don’t hunt for food in water and they don’t fuss much over personal hygiene in the wild.
Can pandas jump?
Yes, pandas can jump, it would be pretty strange if they couldn’t!
Though to be fair, you don’t often see them jump and they don’t have much cause to bother day to day.
Pandas aren’t predators and they prefer to move as little as possible in the wild, so they rarely have cause to leap and certainly have no need to jump as high as they possibly can.
Sometimes they try and get it a bit wrong… but you have to admire them for trying, right?
Are pandas strong climbers?
You’ve probably seen footage of pandas happily climbing trees and play parks in captivity and climbing is a behavior most pandas learn from a very young age.
Their natural habitats are heavily forested and climbing is a great strategy for avoiding humans, other animals and even other pandas (they’re pretty solitary creatures in the wild).
From as early as a few months old many pandas will have the strength and courage to scale all sorts of objects.
Not all pandas are graceful climbers though and the tumbling antics of some bears, caught on video, have helped to win them millions of fans around the world in the age of social media.
Are all bears strong?
The panda fits right in with the other members of the bear family, all of whom possess incredible strength. Bears are one of the largest and strongest families of animals within the mammalian order and pandas are no exception.
This strength is one of the characterists that helped to confirm the panda’s place amongst the bear family, as it has previously been mistaken for a marsupial or even a type of raccoon.
Is the panda strong enough to survive?
So we’ve seen that giant pandas are generally quite strong, though maybe not as strong as some other members of the bear family and maybe not always motivated to put their strength to use.
Is that one of the reasons pandas have become so rare?
Not at all, pandas haven’t suffered in the wild because of losing out to other wildlife, the main threat to the bears over the last century has been the destruction of their natural habitat.
Deforestation in China has shrunk the pandas natural range considerable and it’s this, alongside poaching, that has placed the bear at such risk.
Thankfully the panda’s strength, resilience and calm nature have helped to win it a place in the hearts of millions worldwide and it’s this strength that today makes the giant panda key symbol for animal conservation.
