Animal · India, Sri Lanka, Nepal
Sloth bear
Melursus ursinus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The sloth bear is a shaggy black bear from India that lives mostly on termites and ants, which it sucks out of their nests like a vacuum cleaner. Early naturalists saw its long curved claws and mistook it for a kind of sloth, and the odd name stuck.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Rohit Sharma (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Saumitra Newalkar (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the sloth bear live?
Home: Dry forests and grasslands of India and Sri Lanka.
In the wild it lives in these countries: India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan.
Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.
The short profile
Fully grown: 1.4 to 1.9 m long, 60 to 90 cm at the shoulder. It weighs about 100 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.
The story behind it
A sloth bear has a gap where its top front teeth should be, and lips it can stretch right over its nose, so its mouth works like a tube. It tears a termite mound open with claws as long as a finger, blows the loose dust away and then sucks up the insects with a noise that can be heard a hundred metres off. It also climbs trees for honey and ripe fruit, which is why some people call it the honey bear. A mother carries her cubs on her back for months, something no other bear does, so the little ones stay out of reach of tigers while the family walks through the forest. Fewer than twenty thousand sloth bears are left, and the species counts as vulnerable because the dry forests it needs keep shrinking.
Find it on the globe
Sloth bear is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
What do sloth bears eat?
Mostly termites and ants, which it digs out and sucks up through its tube-shaped mouth. It also takes honey from wild bee nests and eats a lot of fruit, especially mangoes and figs, when the season is right.
Why is it called a sloth bear?
The English name is a mistake. European naturalists saw the long hooked claws and the shaggy coat and filed the animal with the sloths before anyone had watched one alive. Other languages name it after its stretchy lips instead.
Are sloth bears dangerous?
They do not hunt people, but they see and hear poorly and are easily startled, so a surprised bear may rear up and strike out. In parts of India they injure more people each year than tigers do, and villagers simply give them room.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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