Reading Paper 1

The jungle was dense and unforgiving. Maya hacked away at the vines with her machete, sweat dripping down her forehead. She had been searching for the Lost City of Z for three weeks now, and her supplies were running low.

"We should turn back," grumbled Thomas, swatting at a mosquito. "There's nothing here but bugs and heat."

Maya ignored him. She knew they were close. The map her grandfather had left her showed a distinct rock formation shaped like a sleeping jaguar, and she had spotted it just hours ago through her binoculars.

As they pushed through a thick wall of ferns, the trees suddenly cleared. Before them stood a massive stone structure, covered in moss but unmistakably man-made. It was a temple, rising high above the canopy.

"By Jove," Thomas whispered, his complaints forgotten. "You actually found it."

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes used to distinguish it from the red panda, a neighboring musteloid.

Though it belongs to the order Carnivora, the giant panda is a folivore, with bamboo shoots and leaves making up more than 99% of its diet. Giant pandas in the wild will occasionally eat other grasses, wild tubers, or even meat in the form of birds, rodents, or carrion. In captivity, they may receive honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, or bananas along with specially prepared food.

The giant panda lives in a few mountain ranges in central China, mainly in Sichuan, but also in neighbouring Shaanxi and Gansu. As a result of farming, deforestation, and other development, the giant panda has been driven out of the lowland areas where it once lived, and it is a conservation-reliant vulnerable species.