The giant panda's special black-and-white fur makes it one of the most recognizable animals on the planet. But why does it have this unique coloring? To hide from natural enemies, both in the snow and in the shadows, study lead author Tim Caro, a professor in the UC （University of California） Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, said in a new statement. Moreover, the large black circles around a panda's eyes may help other pandas recognize it, the researchers said.

Understanding why the giant panda has such noticeable color has been a long-term problem to solve. To find out the answer, Caro and his colleagues looked at photos of pandas and 195 other carnivore （食肉动物） species, including 39 subspecies of bears. Then, they recorded the coloring on each area of those animals' bodies, and compared them with areas of the panda's body. "Compared with the previous studies, the breakthrough in this study was treating each part of the body as an independent area," Caro said.

The research team tried to figure out the purpose of the dark-colored furry areas. After going through many comparisons, the researchers determined that the white parts of the giant panda help it hide in the snow. In contrast, its black arms and legs help it hide in the shadows, they said. The panda's white-and-black coloring didn't appear to be related to temperature regulation. Nor did they find evidence that the dark circles around a panda's eyes helped to make them look cuter.

"This really was a great effort by our team, finding and scoring thousands of images and scoring more than 10 areas per picture from over 20 possible colors," study co-author Ted Stankowich, an assistant professor of bi ology at California State University, Long Beach, said in the statement. "Sometimes it takes hundreds of hours of hard work to answer the simplest question: Why is the panda black and white?"