So how did Giant pandas get their patches? There has been much speculation about why the panda is so extraordinarily coloured. Some say that their black-and-white pattern acts as a camouflage, particularly in the snow, helping them to hide from predators.

Others claim the opposite and say that the pandas’ striking colours allow them to send complex signals to other members of the species; their eye patches and black ears providing a threatening stare to rivals. Another theory is that the colour may help the panda regulate its body temperature, black losing less heat than white; but this does not explain why the panda has such a clownish face.

A Tibetan legend gives a far more charming explanation. One day many years ago, a young Chinese girl saw a leopard fighting with a panda. The girl tried to save the panda, who was going to be killed. The panda escaped but the leopard turned on the girl and killed her instead.

When the panda realised that the girl had been killed trying to save his life, he was stricken with grief and decided to call all the pandas in the world for her funeral. As was the custom at panda funerals they all wore black armbands and as they cried they rubbed their eyes with the armbands, causing them to become black. To block out the sound of the wailing they held their arms to their ears and hugged their bodies in their grief. Soon their black armbands had made patches on the fur of all pandas.

Wolong Nature Reserve is situated on the eastern slopes of the Qionglai Mountains on the western fringe of China’s Sichuan Basin and covers a respectable 2,000 square kilometres of stunning high-altitude forest. The Reserve was established in 1963 as the first region to specifically protect the Giant panda and in 1980 it was made part of UNESCO’s “Man and Biosphere” network. Between 1974 and 1989, extensive forest destruction by logging and, at lower elevations, clearance for agriculture, led to 50 percent of the panda’s habitat being lost elsewhere in Sichuan. Thankfully, last year, a total ban on logging was implemented in this province.

The fate of Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in the wild is inextricably linked to bamboo, which makes up more than 99 percent of their diet. Fossil evidence indicates that pandas were originally carnivorous but gradually, as they began to eat more bamboo and less meat, their bodies adapted to a less active life making them less capable of hunting down prey. Unfortunately, as their carnivorous gut is so ill-equipped for digesting plant cells, pandas have to consume around 20 kilogrammes of bamboo each day.

They have even evolved an enlarged wrist bone or “pseudo-thumb” to enable them to manipulate a bamboo cane with greater dexterity. There are, of course, advantages to having a super-abundant food in all seasons, even if that food is of low quality, but scientists are still confused as to why pandas ignore the more nutritious foods that black bears feed and grow fat on, such as berries and nuts. The low-nutrient bamboo does not allow the pandas to build up much fat and so, while the bears are hibernating, the pandas must continue to forage in the snowstorms and bitter cold of Chinese winters.