PARIS, Dec 27 — They may simply look like large cuddly black-and-white teddy bear creatures but giant panda bears are in fact complex social creatures.

A study from researchers in China and the US, published on the website of the NGO BioOne, explains that they use highly advanced techniques to communicate with their peers.

A research team led by Thomas Connor came to this conclusion by analysing the findings of a 2015 Michigan State University study.

That research showed that pandas in the wild tend to leave scent marks on the trees around them, rubbing glands hidden beneath their tails.

But until now, researchers didn’t know how to explain this surprising behaviour.

Thomas Connor and his colleagues have noticed that these bears rub themselves against trees to make a kind of scent imprint and share important information with their fellow bears.

They use these olfactory markings to keep in touch with their own kind, just like humans do with social networks.

This technique enables them not only to know the position of other pandas in the same territory, but also to give them clues about their sex, age, size, social status and even personality.

Furthermore, this scent marking is very useful in letting other pandas know whether the male or female leaving them on the trees is ready to mate. "[T]hese scent trees are a social media.

Like Facebook, it’s asynchronous, meaning you don’t have to be in the same place at the same time. It allows one to broadcast to many, and it’s a record.

A panda marking a tree isn’t so different from a Facebook post,” Ken Frank, one of the study authors, drew as a comparison in a press release.

This is a most surprising discovery, since giant pandas are often described as solitary animals.

They rarely mix with other members of their species, except in spring, during mating season.

But this scientific paper suggests that they are more sociable than most people imagine.

More work needs to be done in the future to understand how pandas use their environment for social purposes.

"Anything we can learn about how they live and what they need can ultimately help inform good conservation policies and maybe understand our own behaviour a little more,” noted Jianguo Liu and Rachel Carson, study co-authors, in the same media release. — ETX Studio