Panda Bamboo Energy Budget: Why Pandas Must Feed 12+ Hours a Day (2D)
2D bioenergetics lab: a giant panda's fat reserve rises and falls from a real energy-balance model — bamboo intake rate, dry-matter digestibility by plant part, and a metabolic-rate multiplier — showing why a near-carnivore gut forces 12+ hours of feeding a day just to break even.
This 2D companion turns the 3D panda-in-a-forest scene into a running bioenergetics model: a real energy-balance equation tracks how many kilograms of bamboo a panda eats, how much of that is actually digestible dry matter, and how it nets out against a deliberately low basal metabolic rate. Switch between leaves, culm and young shoots to see digestibility swing the outcome, or drop the feeding-time-budget slider to watch a healthy fat reserve slide into deficit — the same math that explains why real giant pandas spend most of their waking hours chewing just to stay in energy balance.
A real energy-balance model: net kcal/h = assimilated bamboo energy (dry-matter fraction × caloric density × apparent digestibility, part-dependent) minus a low basal metabolic rate scaled by an activity multiplier, integrated into a fat reserve tracked across simulated days.
2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install