Figure 1. Giant panda preferences for sugars that taste sweet to humans.

Eight giant pandas were tested behaviorally for their preferences for different concentrations of sugars using a two-bowl preference test: one bowl contained a tastant solution (1 L), and the other contained plain water (1 L). They were also tested for 100 mM sucrose plus the sweet taste inhibitor lactisole (2.5 mM; A). All tastant solutions were tested twice, on separate days. Each bar shows the median + interquartile range of the combined amount of a tastant or water consumed during the two separate tests for giant pandas: green for the lower concentration of tastant, and blue for the higher concentration (see Table S1 for detailed statistics). Only four pandas were tested for 700 mM maltose. Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank tests were performed for every tastant (vs. water) and for sucrose plus lactisole versus sucrose. *p<0.05; **p<0.01.