this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Idk if "descendants of omnivores" counts because then you could exclude a number of critters like pigs for being "descendants of herbivores" and then 'why do pigs have more stereoscopic vision than a t-rex '
The obvious caveat is that pandas at the minimum don't have selective pressure for side eyes or they have something pressuring stereoscopic vision even more similar to how aquatic animals have less selective pressure for forward facing eyes.
I would imagine the way pandas eat bamboo stalks is more visual than most herbivores and that alone could help them retain steroscopic vision.
I was trying to imply that pandas did it recently enough for such pressures to not have kicked in yet. Probably should've specified that a bit better.
Google tells me that pandas started eating bamboo 6-8 million years ago and stopped eating meat 3 million years ago.
That's not exactly recent.
For reference, the first Homo appeared 2.8 million years ago and the first Homo Sapiens 300 000 years ago.
The last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived 5-10 million years ago.
So if evolution can evolve humans in that time frame, you'd expect that it could also adapt an omnivour to a herbivour.
Huh I legit thought they were a more recent species, like last glacial maximum. Is this one of those things like with the three toe sloth and two toe sloth where they are on opposite sides of their evolutionary tree but look generally similar? Are pandas kinda like sun bears where they are more or less doing their own thing while black, brown, and polar bears stay grouped weirdly close to each other in behavior.