Pandas are eaten in prehistoric times

Are they delicious?

They are large, cuddly and the most gentle of creatures - but in prehistoric times, Giant Pandas were just another source of food to primitive man.

A Chinese scientist has claimed humans once included panda meat in their diet after uncovering fossils that show the animals died from wounds caused by hunters.

Wei Guangbiao said an examination of excavated fossils in the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing showed pandas had been "slashed to death by man".

He said prehistoric man would not have killed animals that would have been of use to them in the daily battle for survival.

Pandas, then in plentiful numbers, would have been a ready source of food and a good complement to a diet that consisted mostly of berries and anything else they could trap or catch.

Given their shy nature, and slow, lumbering walk, the bears would have been easy prey for hunters armed with sticks and stones, and later spears and knives.

The distinctive white and black fur of the panda would also have been used by primitive man to provide warmth.

Guiangbiao, head of the Institute of Three Gorges Paleoanthropology at a Chongqing museum, said the pandas who lived 10,000 to one million years ago were much smaller than those seen in captivity and the wild today.

He told the Chongqing Morning Post newspaper the pandas would have been found in the city’s high mountains. Here they flourished in their natural habitat of cool, wet and cloudy mountain forest land, which is rich in bamboo.

Historians believe panda meat was once a delicacy eaten by the rulers of Ancient China.

Today, the Giant Panda has been on the endangered species list for more than 50 years and is called a “National Treasure” in China, where there are breeding centres tasked with helping to boost the dwindling population.

Latest figures show there are 239 Pandas living in captivity, while the wild population is said to number under 3,000.