Why giant pandas roll around in horse manure

https://phys.org ^ | December 8, 2020 | by Bob Yirka

[cjshapi]

Interesting info, but I don’t think I’m going to try it when I go to the barn after work to see my horse. Just going with the usual winter coat.

[Red Badger]

I had a dog once that rolled around in cow pies, especially fresh runny ones..............

[Samurai_Jack]

Because they’re Democrats!

[dfwgator]

Because they can.

[cymbeline]

“I had a dog once that rolled around in cow pies”

In my family are two dogs that occasionally wallow around in poop. Dogs are different from people. How many people sniff other people’s asses?

[ifinnegan]

Interesting.

Of greater interest is the natural basis for this behavior?

They didn’t have horse manure to roll in in the wild. Do they use something else? Or is this learned behavior in zoos?

[PGR88]

[job]

Real Answer: BC it’s fun!

[Red Badger]

It was observed in wild pandas. And horses have been in Asia for millennia.................

[Red Badger]

I don’t know.
I’ve never been to San Fransisco...............

[N. Theknow]

Pessimist...enters a room full of toys and cries because someone will come and take him away from the room.

Optimist...enters a room full of horseshit and laughs and digs while smiling broadly because he figures with all that horseshit, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.

[dainbramaged]

If you’re walking your dog near a salmon stream in the fall, be sure they are leashed - for some reason they love to roll in the rotted spawned out carcasses which smell really bad.

[blueunicorn6]

“Their decade long study”

Ten years watching bears roll in horse crap.

I guess it was a national emergency.

[George from New England]

Pandas probably have no sense of smell.

[EinNYC]

I might have thought that rolling in the droppings of an herbivore would render the pandas with an odor “camouflage” so that possible prey would not detect their presence. However, pandas are 99% herbivores, only occasionally consuming a small rodent or two. Interestingly, pandas, which descended from omnivorous bears, are still physiologically and internally set up for an omnivorous diet, not a plant-based diet. So these research findings that rolling in manure might be like taking aspirin if you’re feverish is very interesting.

[Darteaus94025]

Because they’re Democrats!

Comment of the month.

[Hot Tabasco]

Wow, that’s something I always wondered about.........

[ETL]

Why do they roll, period, might be a better question.

[MinuteGal]

Maybe the pandas think it's therapeutic, i.e., a panda-emetic.

Leni