Spanish research discovers key to Panda's Thumb
Researchers led by Manuel J. Salesa from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain, including a scientist from France, have discovered key evidence to explain the opposable thumbs found in red pandas. Pandas are one of the few animals, like humans, to have an opposable thumb. The opposable thumb is important in evolutionary terms, as it gives the animal possessing one the ability to grasp objects. The panda has become the focus of much debate between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists. Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould published The Riddle Of The Panda's Thumb to illustrate how the panda evolved its thumb to gain an evolutionary advantage by more efficiently stripping leaves from bamboo. In fact, the thumbs found on pandas are 'false' in that they are evolved not as individual fingers, but as part of the carpal (wrist) bones. The new research focuses on an ancestor of the modern red panda (Ailurus fulgens), the Simocyon batalleri - named after the Batallones-1 site where the animal's remains were discovered near Madrid. The team's research led to the finding that the opposable thumbs found in both the red and giant pandas were evolved independently - the giant panda (Ailuropeda melanoleuca) developed its thumb to strip leaves, while the red panda evolved its thumb for greater manoeuvrability in the trees. 'The false thumbs of the red panda and of Simocyon batalleri more likely evolved as an aid for arboreal locomotion, with the red panda secondarily developing its ability for item manipulation and thus producing one of the most dramatic cases of convergence among vertebrates', said the team.
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