Sun bear

Where does the sun bear live?

Home: Lowland tropical forests of Southeast Asia.

In the wild it lives in these countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India.

Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.

The short profile

Fully grown: 100-140 cm long, about 70 cm at the shoulder. It weighs about 45 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.

The story behind it

A sun bear weighs about as much as a large dog, far less than half a brown bear. It spends much of its life off the ground: long curved claws and bare soles give it a firm grip on smooth trunks, and it bends branches into a nest to rest in. Its tongue can stretch far out of its mouth, long enough to reach honey, termites and beetle grubs deep inside a hollow tree. The pale patch on its chest has a slightly different shape on every bear, a little like a name tag. Sun bears are classed as vulnerable, because the forests they need are logged and cleared for plantations, and cubs are still taken illegally to be sold as pets.

Find it on the globe

Sun 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.