The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), also known as the Stickney Bear or labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous species of bear found wild within the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the Pleistocene and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution. The population isolated in Sri Lanka is considered as a subspecies. Unlike brown and black bears, sloth bears have lankier builds, long shaggy coats that form a mane around the face, long sickle-shaped claws, and a specially adapted lower lip and palate used for sucking insects. Sloth bears breed during spring and early summer and give birth near the beginning of winter. They feed on termites, honeybee colonies and fruits. Sloth bears sometimes attack humans that encroach on their territory. Historically, humans have drastically reduced their habitat and diminished their population by hunting them for food and products such as their baculum and claws. These bears have been used as performing pets due to their tameable nature.
Read more about Sloth Bear: Naming and Etymology, Evolution, Physical Description, Behavior, Subspecies and Range, Cultural References
Famous quotes containing the words sloth and/or bear:
“You need not be proud of me.... I’m only being active till you can be again—it isn’t such a great desire on my part to serve the world and I’ll fall back into habits of sloth quite easily!”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“There is a distinction to be drawn between true collectors and accumulators. Collectors are discriminating; accumulators act at random. The Collyer brothers, who died among the tons of newspapers and trash with which they filled every cubic foot of their house so that they could scarcely move, were a classic example of accumulators, but there are many of us whose houses are filled with all manner of things that we “can’t bear to throw away.””
—Russell Lynes (1910–1991)