Pandas Eaten By Ancient Chinese

Cuddly giant pandas, regarded as ‘national treasures’ in modern China, were once delicious food for ancient people living in the country’s southwest, a Chinese scientist has claimed. Pandas were eaten by prehistoric man who inhabited in the area of today’s Chongqing Municipality, where the cuddly creatures once teemed, said paleoanthropologist Wei Guangbiao. ‘We have studied many samples of the panda fossils excavated in Chongqing from the sites where humans once lived,’ said Wei. ‘A large number of them showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man,’ he was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua new agency. But Wei said the pandas ancient man devoured were by no means ‘giant’, but the miniature version of the giant pandas we see today.