The growth of giant panda is in three stages:

• Cub Stage:
  From birth to the point of natural ablactation, the cub giant panda will be about 18 months of age. The cub giant panda at this stage of growth feeds on mother's milk, and grows and develops quickly.
• Sub-Adulthood Stage:
  From the end of the cub stage till a giant panda is fully grown up, this interval stage is when the giant panda gains weight at a relatively slower speed. Due to the difference between male and female giant pandas in their maturity ages, they have different length of time for this stage.
• Adulthood Stage:
  This stage refers to the period when giant panda has reached sexual maturity. A male wildlife giant panda enters into the adult stage at around 7 years old, whereas a female one at around the age of 6. Generally speaking, captive giant pandas enter into this stage around 2-3 years earlier than wildlife ones, due to sufficient nutrition in the captive environment.

Birth and Growth

A new-born giant panda is very weak and small, compared with a grown-up giant panda of 70-150 kilograms. This small-size feature is relatively rare among Carnivora animals (for example, a new-born Asiatic black bear is about 350±15 grams on average, whilst a giant panda is only around 140 grams). Yet, since a giant panda still grows relatively fast in first several months after birth, followed by a relatively slower growth speed, it still fits the growth mode of large Filane family animals and Ursidae family animals. The following is the growth of the cub stage of a giant panda.

A new-born giant panda is very weak and small, with eyes shut, its body covered by a thin layer of white hair over its pink skin. The size and shape grossly differ from an adult giant panda. The average weight is about 140 grams, and the length of body about 10-plus centimeters. The tail is about 1/5-1/3 of the length of body, which proportion is much larger than that of an adult giant panda. Their voice is more piercing and of a high pitch for their small size. They are breast-bed 6-14 times a day, 30 minutes each time. They can crawl on their feet.
About every 15 days a cub giant panda will double its weight. The black patches around the eyes, over the ears, and around the shoulders start to appear. The hair over the body gets thicker.
After around 44 days of age, a cub giant panda looks like a miniature of an adult giant panda; the calls from the cub giant panda becomes less frequent. The cub feeds on milk 8 times a day. The cub can crawl, but its legs cannot move with proper coordination.
After around 120 days of age, its weight is around 3 kilograms, the cub giant panda starts to walk with a few steady steps. Around this period of time, the giant panda is very active. It can walk, roll, and climb onto mother's back. The milk teeth have developed for around 40 days.
After around 180 days of age, the cub giant panda can walk and climb trees, and play with mother. At this stage, with around 26-28 teeth developed—canine teeth, foreteeth, premolar teeth—the cub begins to eat solid food.
When the cub giant panda is 12 months old, it weighs 30 kilograms. When it is 15 months old, it is weaned. When it is 18 months old, it leaves its mother's caretaking.

Mating and Reproduction

The estrus phase of a giant panda is from March to May of each year. A wildlife female giant panda has its first estrus at six and half years old, and at seven and half years old it becomes sexually receptive. A wildlife female giant panda has its first estrus when she is six and half years old, and when seven and half years old it is sexually receptive. A [wild] male giant panda will commence its first courtship when he is seven and half years old, and when eight and half years old he has the mating access. Usually a giant panda in the captive environment is well nutritious, causing its sexual maturity to arrive 2-3 years earlier than a wildlife giant panda. A female giant panda will demonstrate the sexually receptive behaviors of: rubbing tails, playing water, chasing giant panda of the other sex, increased walking activities, decreased appetite, vulvae reddened, etc., and sending out friendly and excited calling. Male giant pandas also demonstrate sexually receptive testicles, and the touch-feeling of hardness of testicles, and increased activities.

Giant pandas like to mate in raining days or in the sunny time immediately after rain. Male giant pandas usually need to fight against each other for the mating access. Giant pandas raised in zoos mostly mate in the morning or in the evening. Usually the optimal mating period only lasts 3-5 days. Due to the fact that female giant pandas are sexually receptive for only a couple of days in a year, it has made it even more difficult to conserve and reproduce giant pandas.

Giant pandas' pregnancy is about 83-200 days, during which the shape and size will not change obviously. Wild female giant pandas deliver babies in autumn, and they usually choose big tree holes in firs for the delivery, breeding and nurturing. A female giant panda will give birth to one to three babies each time, but usually she delivers only one. A female panda will take care of its baby or babies for about one year time, so it takes two years for a female panda to become sexually receptive again. Contrary to the usual tame temperament, the female giant panda, during the breeding period, becomes very protective of its babies to fend of trespassing enemies.

Diseases and Natural Enemies

A giant panda's lifespan is around 20-30 years. Their natural enemies in wildlife are mainly: Asiatic golden cats, the clouded leopards, the jackals, the wolves, the yellow-throated martens, etc, which will mainly attack the baby pandas, the sick ones, the weak ones and the aging ones. However, Asiatic golden cats more often attack cubs of giant pandas. The usual diseases that giant pandas may suffer include digestive system diseases, wounds, parasitosis, and fungal diseases.

In addition, as bamboo blossoms and dies nationwide, the pandas would face food shortages, even starve to death, as the bamboo they like flower and die without being replaced. The situation of survivorship is made worse by the fact that the panda habitat is fragmented into many small "islands", each containing only a few pandas, which fact prohibits giant pandas to migrate to other places of bamboo during a time of natural growth and decline of forestry.