There are many cows with brown spots instead of black – but almost no one knows: there are also cocoa pandas, i.e. animals with light brown coat parts instead of the usual black. Chinese scientists explain that they are so rare that they should be considered national treasures.
There is currently only one brown panda in captivity, named Qizai, which can be seen in the video below.
Rare pandas now need to be bred
The goal now should be to breed the animals specifically with the rare coloration. The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), with its distinctive black and white fur, is iconic. However, in 1985, a female panda with brown and white fur was first discovered in China’s Qinling Mountains, according to the research team led by Fuwen Wei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Only a handful of other cacao pandas have been found in this region in the past forty years. They are not found in other parts of China.
Is it all due to a changed gene?
The scientists used samples from 225 normal-colored and two brown pandas to analyze what caused the unusual color. This means that a single altered gene – called Bace2 – is likely responsible for the light brown appearance. When the mutation was introduced into black mice using Crispr’s genetic scissors, their fur color also changed to light brown, as the team reports in the journal ‘Proceedings’ of the US National Academy of Sciences (‘PNAS’). The mutation likely reduces the number and size of so-called melanosomes, specialized components of cells that produce, store and transport the pigment melanin.
However, the team points out that whether this assumption is actually correct must first be clarified by analyzing samples from other brown pandas. It is believed that the mutation in pandas could be so rare because it has other harmful effects on the animals in addition to the changed color. However, no effects on size or reproductive capacity were found in Qizai and another animal, Dandan.
Source: Krone
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