On average, giant pandas are active for around fifteen hours every day, with the remaining nine hours of the animal’s day spent resting. The giant panda seems to rest as and when the mood takes it; it will remain immobile for minutes or for hours. Normally, giant pandas look for somewhere to rest against when they search out a rest site (leaning against a tree or boulder requires less energy than sitting upright and so helps to save precious energy). Occasionally, the animal will shelter in a hollow trunk, or in a cave, especially during rainstorms or other inclement weather. Caves and tree hollows are probably the most sheltered locations available to wild panda, and it is these same sites that are chosen by pregnant females to give birth to their young. Although females of the species regularly construct breeding nests in such shelters as the birth season approaches, resting pandas never build nests, relying instead on their springy, oily coat to protect them from the cold and damp.

Resting giant pandas either sit against a supporting tree or rock, or curl up on the ground, assuming a spherical shape. This reduces the surface area exposed to the air and so helps to conserve heat loss. They sometimes rest their cheeks on a fore- or hind-paw, using the limb as a pillow to insulate the head from the cold and often frozen ground.

During its active periods the giant panda is primarily concerned with only one topic- eating. Of the giant panda’s daily fifteen hours of activity, a colossal fourteen hours is given over feeding (55% of time), with only one hour spent on other maintenance activities such as excretion, drinking and grooming. Unlike most mammals, the giant panda can be found in an active state at anytime of the day or night. Generally, activity (almost invariably feeding) reaches its lowest level in the morning, some time between 8:00am and 9:00am. It then rises steadily to an afternoon peak between 4:00pm and 7:00pm after which it declines rapidly to a low point around 10:00pm. In summer and autumn this low activity level is maintained until it peaks the following morning, but during winter and spring the giant panda wakes early and there is a second activity peak during the hours of darkness, around 4:00am to 6:00am. Put simply, for most of the year the giant panda feeds for eight hours and sleeps for four hours during the day, then feeds again at night for another eight hours, after which it takes a second four-hour ‘nap’ before awakening to begin the cycle anew.

Appendix: Why does the giant panda have such an unusual behaviour?