Giant pandas Giant pandas are an endangered species. They are often called pandas or panda bears, although their scientific name is Ailuropda Melanoleuca. Being an omnivore, the giant panda’s diet consists of 99% bamboo along with small percentages of fish, pikas, rodents, vines, irises, crocus, and murices grass. Pandas eat in a sitting position and since they eat about twelve hours a day, they sit a lot! During these twelve hours the pandas will have consumed somewhere between twenty-three and thirty-six pounds of food. Pandas may eat a lot, but they can be very picky eaters. There are twenty-five types of bamboo in our world that pandas will eat.