The red panda is arboreal, nocturnal and crepuscular, and solitary except for females with cubs and during the mating season. It lives in temperate forests in the Himalayas from Nepal to Shaanxi province of China. The diet of the red panda is mostly bamboo, particularly the tender young shoots, with the occasional small animal, bird egg, flower, or fruit. Because they lack a specialized gut for digesting bamboo, they need to spend most of their time either eating or sleeping (the latter to allow time to digest the shoots).
If threatened, a red panda will try to climb up a rock face or tree. If escape is impossible, the panda will stand on its hind legs to make itself look bigger and attempt to defend itself with the sharp claws on its front feet.