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Live a life as a giant panda

LegendaryOdds: 1 in 9.4 × 10¹⁷

About 1,864 in the wild, all in the mountains of central China. About 1.9 thousand giant pandas are alive right now.

Sources: China’s fourth national giant panda survey (2015): 1,864 wild pandas.

Your life

  1. Day 1 · You are born in a den in the Qinling Mountains, pink, blind and about 1/900th of your mother’s weight.
  2. Month 3 · You open your eyes and take your first wobbly steps.
  3. Year 1 · You climb trees to rest and stay safe.
  4. Year 2 · Your mother has taught you what she can.
  5. Year 4 · You eat bamboo for up to 14 hours a day, 12 to 38 kilograms of it.
  6. Year 7 · You have a cub of your own. Pandas usually raise one cub every two years.
  7. Year 18 · You are old for a wild panda.

Get rebornEvery number and its source

Questions

What are the odds of being reborn as a giant panda?

Odds: 1 in 9.4 × 10¹⁷. About 1,864 in the wild, all in the mountains of central China. (China’s fourth national giant panda survey (2015): 1,864 wild pandas.)

What are my odds of being reborn as a human?

About 1 in 210 billion if any animal can be drawn. There are roughly 8.2 billion people, but around 1.3 sextillion copepods, 440 quintillion soil nematodes and 10 quintillion insects. Among mammals and birds only, the odds improve to about 1 in 21.

What is the most common animal on Earth?

By head count, tiny crustaceans called copepods (about 1.3 × 10²¹, an order-of-magnitude estimate), then soil nematodes (about 4.4 × 10²⁰, van den Hoogen et al. 2019). That is why the true-odds draw almost always makes you something small.

The odds, animal by animal

Copepod Soil nematode Insect Ant Antarctic krill Honey bee Fish Wild bird Bat Chicken Wild rodent Human House sparrow Cow Dog Elephant Blue whale