Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
Pandas are famously picky eaters. They only consume bamboo -- a poor quality diet low in fat.
But the creatures appear to have evolved to get the most out of what they do eat, according to a new study.
Their gut bacteria changes in late spring and early summer when bamboo is at its most nutritious -- while it's sprouting protein-rich green shoots. The bacteria makes the bear gain more weight and store more fat, which researchers said may compensate for a lack of nutrients later in the year, when bamboo plants have only fibrous leaves to chomp on.
"We've known these pandas have a different set of gut microbiota during the shoot-eating season for a long time, and it's very obvious that they are chubbier during this time of the year," said lead study author Guangping Huang, a researcher for the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a news release.
The study was published on Jan. 18 in the journal Cell Reports.
To investigate how the gut bacteria could affect a panda's metabolism, the team first collected the feces of eight wild giant pandas in China's Qingling mountains during both leaf-eating season and shoot-eating season and then examined how the poop samples differed.
They found that a bacterium called Clostridium butyricum was more abundant in the pandas' guts during the season when they enjoy the fresh bamboo shoots.
To understand whether this bacteria helps the bears gain and store weight, the researchers performed a fecal transplant, putting the panda poop they collected into lab mice. Then they fed the mice for three weeks with a bamboo-based diet that simulated what pandas eat.
While mice are very different from pandas, it wasn't possible to run such tests on endangered and vulnerable animals, said Wei Fuwen, a coauthor of the study and a professor at the Key Lab of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology in the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Mice were a good substitute.
"Mice have proven to be an effective model for studying the function of the gut microbiome in humans," Wei said via email.
Researchers found that mice transplanted with panda feces collected during shoot-eating season gained significantly more weight, despite consuming same amount of food.
"The gut bacteria was the only variable in this research," Wei explained.
Felix Sommer, group leader of functional host-microbiome research at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, Germany, noted that the number of pandas involved in the study was small and the experiment had only been performed once. Sommer, who was not involved in the research, also stressed the researchers had found a correlation, not a causal relationship between the bacteria and weight gain.
"I would have asked for some kind of validation experiment or a re-sampling at another year or time point," said Sommer, who has conducted similar research on hibernating brown bears, via email.
Wei said that further work is needed to validate the causal relationship directly in pandas. He added that their work could help improve the health of captive giant pandas.
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
As Wegovy becomes available to Canadians starting Monday, a medical expert is cautioning patients wanting to use the drug to lose weight that no medication is a ''magic bullet,' and the new medication is meant particularly for people who meet certain criteria related to obesity and weight.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
Quebec Premier François Legault reiterated that the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University must be dismantled while police remain 'on the lookout for new developments.'
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.