We are family

摘要

For more than 100 years, scientists argued over exactly what a panda was. Now - finally - it has been admitted to the Ursidae clan, and the spectacled bear of South America has been confirmed as its closest-living relative. In 1869, French Jesuit missionary Pere David first described the giant panda to western science. With just a pelt and reported sightings to go on, he classified it as a bear. But the following year, zoologist Alphonse Milne Edwards dissected the first specimen and found it had more in common with the red panda, a member of the racoon family. For more than a century, scientists quarrelled over whether the giant panda belonged to the bear family, the raccoon family or a separate family of its own.