Subspecies and Range
| Name | Distribution | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Sri Lankan sloth bear (Melursus ursinus inornatus) Pucheran, 1855 |
Sri Lanka | Sri Lankan sloth bears have much shorter body hair, making them appear less shaggy. They are also smaller in dimensions, even in the teeth. They sometimes lack the characteristic white chest mark. At the turn of the century, sloth bears were found throughout Sri Lanka, but reduced in number after the turn of the century, due to wide-scale conversion of upland forests into tea and coffee plantations. They are now restricted to the northern and eastern lowlands. |
| Common sloth bear (Melursus ursinus ursinus) (Shaw, 1791) | India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Pakistan | In India, their distribution is patchy, and mostly occur in areas of forest cover. They are absent in the high mountains of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, and a broad non-forested swath in the south. Sloth bears are the most widespread bear species in India, being found in the Siwaliks(also in Pakistan), low hills bordering the outer range of the Himalayas from Punjab to Arunachal Pradesh, though they are no longer found as far west as Punjab. They are isolated from the sloth bear populations of Nepal, due to the connection being broken by agricultural lands. Sloth bears in Nepal are mainly restricted to the Terai, the southern strip of lowland forest and grasslands bordering India. A few isolated populations may still occur in the Chittagong and Sylhet regions of eastern Bangladesh. |
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