Sloth bear

Sloth bears eat termites, ants and fruit.

They dig into termite mounds with their long claws. Then they suck up the termites, slurp! They also love honey and fruit like mangoes.

Sloth bears are the bear world's insect specialists. They rip open hard termite mounds with their long claws and suck up the termites through a gap where their top front teeth are missing. They can even close their nostrils to keep out dust and insects.

When trees are full of fruit, usually in the rainy season, sloth bears eat mangoes, figs and other fruits. Outside the fruit season, insects make up most of their food. They also climb trees to knock down honeycombs.

Sloth bears live mainly on termites, ants and fruit. The IUCN describes them as the only bear species specifically adapted for myrmecophagy. Fruit can make up 70 to 90 percent of the diet in the fruiting season, while termites and other insects can exceed 80 percent the rest of the year; the National Zoo puts insects at 95 percent outside the fruit season.

They excavate termites from cement-hard mounds, knock honeycombs from trees, and eat beetles, grubs, flowers and, during shortages, carrion. In parts of India, sloth bears raid peanut, maize and fruit crops, especially where their habitat is degraded, though in Nepal and Sri Lanka crop raiding is uncommon.

Sloth bears are noisy eaters.

They grunt and snort as they dig for termites. They usually live alone. They do not sleep all winter.

Sloth bears are noisy, busy animals. They grunt and snort as they dig for termites, pull down branches for fruit or snuffle under leaves for grubs. They usually live alone, though several may gather where food is plentiful.

Sloth bears do not hibernate. In hot places with little forest cover, they are mostly active at night or at dawn and dusk, and rest by day in rock outcrops and thickets. Where they are left undisturbed, they may be active in the day.

Sloth bears are solitary but are occasionally seen in groups where food is plentiful. They do not hibernate. Their daily schedule shifts with heat and disturbance: in hot areas with sparse forest they are mainly nocturnal or crepuscular, sheltering in rock outcrops and thickets, while in protected areas they may be more active by day.

As ant and termite specialists they have small home ranges compared with other bears. They can live at high density: a mark-resight study in Nepal's Chitwan National Park estimated 27 bears per 100 square kilometers, and up to 72 in a core area. Tigers, and possibly leopards, are their only natural predators, and sloth bears have been seen fending off tigers.

There are fewer sloth bears than there used to be.

The forests where they live are getting smaller. People are protecting forests and parks to keep sloth bears safe.

The sloth bear is Vulnerable. The biggest problem is the loss of its forests and grasslands as farms, towns, roads and plantations spread across one of the most crowded parts of the world.

There is good news too. In India, sloth bears are fully protected by law, and they have been reported in more than 170 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries there, where they are reasonably well protected.

The IUCN assessed the sloth bear as Vulnerable in March 2016 (published 2020) and expects declines of more than 30 percent over the next three generations, mainly from habitat loss and degradation driven by human population growth. No reliable range-wide population estimate exists; published estimates range from fewer than 10,000 to more than 20,000 bears.

Where people use degraded bear habitat, surprise encounters in thick cover have caused serious human injuries and deaths, and bears involved in conflicts may be killed; such conflicts are increasing outside protected areas (IUCN). Poaching for body parts has been reported, though commercial trade appears lower than for other Asian bears. Capturing cubs for street shows, illegal in India since 1972, continued until 2009 and has since been largely controlled.