Bear Or Raccoon? The Debate Was A Long One

/ Post by Pandas International

When European scientist Pere Armand David, a French missionary and naturalist, became the first Westerner to see a Panda, he christened it Ursus melanoleucus (black and white bear). After examining bones and teeth of the animal, however, Paris Natural History Museum Professor Alphonse Milne-Edwards reclassified it Ailuropoda melanoleuca (black and white panda foot) – a raccoon. Thus began a scientific debate that lasted late into the twentieth century.

In the mid-1980s, a team of geneticists headed by Stephen J. O’Brien, co-chairman of the International Committee on Comparative Gene Mapping, conducted a series of tests on giant panda and bear DNA showed that the panda was genetically closer to a bear than a raccoon. There are still some that believe that the panda belongs in its own category.