Day 4 – Bear 4 (of 8): Sloth Bear!
There are eight bear subspecies and we’ve covered three since Sunday (see below). Sloths are their own family, and while the Sloth Bear is in fact a bear, they are toothless, have long snouts for sucking ants and love to hang from trees – all 300 pounds of them!
Sloth bears live in Southeast Asia, primarily in the forest areas of Sri Lanka and India in warm, humid forests or in grasslands near the equator. “Adult sloth bears usually weigh about 300 pounds… They are usually 3 feet high at the shoulder and about 6 feet long. Sloth bears have a long muzzle with agile, protruding lips, and nostrils that can be closed when raiding termite mounds. They have a hollowed-out bony palate and no front teeth so they can suck ants and termites out of their nests. People can sometimes actually hear the bear sucking up insects from 300 feet away. They have white, curved, blunt claws. They are excellent tree climbers, and are often seen hanging from a tree limb like a sloth.” (Read more at the Great Bear Foundation.)
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