How have monkeys, normally associated with lowland jungle, come to live such a remote mountain existence? This is not the only remarkable animal found within these isolated high peaks.
A Chinese red panda. 
Solitary and quiet, it spends much of its time in the tree tops. 
 Despite its name, the red panda is only a very distant relative of the giant panda.
It's actually more closely related to a skunk. 
 But it does share the giant panda's taste for bamboo. Southwest China's red pandas are known for their very strong facial markings which distinguish them from red pandas found anywhere else in the Himalayas. Like the monkeys, they were isolated in these high forests
when the mountains quite literally rose beneath them in the greatest mountain-building event in recent geological history. 
Over the last 30 million years,
the Indian subcontinent has been pushing northwards into Eurasia. 



 


提起猴子人们通常联想到的是低地雨林，缘何他们选择在偏远的山地繁衍生息呢？它们并非这些孤耸的高峰上唯一醒目的生命，一只中国小熊猫。这位沉默寡言的隐士 将自己生命的大部分置于树的顶端。抛开它的名字，让小熊猫与大熊猫扯上亲戚关系 是一件非常勉强的事情。它在血缘上更接近臭鼬 （小熊猫有时在中文中也称火狐 英文中亦有FireFox既是对其的直接译名 列在熊科或浣熊科是多年来一直被争论的问题 最近经过基因分析 认为与美洲大的浣熊亲缘关系最接近 应该单独列为小熊科），但他却和大熊猫有着共同的口味嗜好 ——竹子。中国西南部的小熊猫因其醒目的面部花纹而著称，这些特征将他们与其它在喜马拉雅地区 发现的火狐物种区分开来。如同猴类一般 它们被隔离在了高远的山林之中，山体在巨大的造山运动中 被挨个完全抬起，近年来的地质学历史已经证明了这一点。在过去3000万年间，印度次大陆持续向北挤压欧亚大陆。