Red pandas were given their name first, hundreds of years before the giant panda was widely known to scientists. So when the big black-and-white bear was discovered, scientists named it 'panda' too because both animals lived in bamboo forests and ate bamboo. The red panda is the original panda.
They spend most of their lives up in the trees. Their reddish-brown fur blends in beautifully with the mossy, lichen-covered branches of the fir and oak trees they live in. They use their long, striped tail like a balance pole when they walk along narrow branches.
Like the giant panda, the red panda eats mostly bamboo - but it also enjoys fruit, leaves, eggs and small bugs. Because bamboo isn't very nutritious, red pandas sleep a lot - around 13 hours a day - to save energy. In winter they wrap their fluffy tail around themselves like a scarf to keep warm.
Red pandas are excellent climbers. They have a special bone in their wrist, a bit like a thumb, that helps them grip branches and bamboo. They are quiet, gentle animals that are hard to see in the wild - which makes the people who study them feel very lucky.