Do you have any photos of them in the defensive position? Or could they not be photographed in the defensive position because of the nature of the defensive position?
indeed. Most montane forests I have been in have the same sorts of characteristics (heavy mists, moss growth on trees, etc) so I will make an assumption that all/most red panda habitat is the same as at Labahe, and they really are well-camouflaged despite sitting in the open. There are large clumps of mosses on the trees which are often the same reddish colour as the panda fur and when the panda is curled up the two look remarkably similar. It is their white faces which give them away, and I think they probably use these markings for finding each other because they do show up over long distances.
Most of the year I expect they feed largely on bamboo though (right now in autumn [fall] they are up in the open canopy feeding on berries) and then they would need no camouflage. The bamboo makes a waist-high carpet over the ground almost everywhere and while from above it looks like a thick mass, from underneath it is fairly open (I'm sure you're familiar with how dwarf bamboo grows!) and the pandas can move through the stems freely while being hidden from above.
This Red Panda looks darker than any individual I saw in a zoo - especially black-framed face. Zoo animals are just a fraction of natural variability of the species.
