Is eating bamboo an inherited trait for pandas?

Answer 1

While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo,

the remaining six species are omnivorous with varied diets. And yes, the eating of bamboo is due to changes in the genes more than 2 million years ago. They lost the taste for umami (savory) that is found in meat.

~Genome sequencing of the giant panda suggests that the dietary switch could have initiated from the loss of the sole T1R1/T1R3 umami taste receptor, resulting from two frameshift

mutations within the T1R1 exons. Umami taste corresponds to high levels of glutamate as found in meat, and may have altered the food choice of the giant panda.~Wikipedia.