40 Fun Facts About Sloth Bears

The zoologist who gave the sloth bear its misleading name later checked which Australian animal for hoaxers' stitches?

Platypus skins looked so much like a prank that George Shaw took scissors to one to hunt for stitches. He had earlier filed the sloth bear among the sloths.

Sloth bears are the only bears whose cubs routinely travel in which way, gripping their mother's shaggy fur?

On her back is where a sloth bear cub rides for its first six to nine months, clinging to a saddle of extra-long fur. Littermates squabble to keep their own seat.

A sloth bear mother with cubs has been seen standing her ground against two of which predator, one after the other?

The tiger is the sloth bear's most dangerous natural enemy, so the bear has evolved to charge instead of flee. Most of these cats give up once the bear has spotted them.

Baloo, the sloth bear of The Jungle Book, takes his name from the word for bear in which language?

Hindi speakers call a bear bhalu, and the book's author gave the pronunciation as BAH-loo. In the stories Baloo is the stern teacher of jungle law.

Sloth bears can close which body part at will to keep out dust and insects while raiding a termite mound?

Nostrils that seal shut let the bear blow dust off a nest and then inhale the insects without breathing in grit. Its nose is also nearly hairless.

Which sense is keen enough to lead a sloth bear to grubs buried underground?

Smell is the sloth bear's best sense by far. Its sight and hearing are poor enough that people sometimes walk right up to one before it notices, which is how many attacks begin.

Which author made a sloth bear famous as Baloo, the teacher of the wolf cubs and of the boy Mowgli?

Rudyard Kipling called Baloo a sleepy brown bear, but the only bears in the Seoni hills where the tales are set are sloth bears.

A smaller subspecies of sloth bear, sometimes missing the pale chest mark, lives on which island nation?

Sri Lanka's sloth bears keep to the island's lowland dry forests and can be about 30 percent lighter than mainland ones. Fewer than 1,000 are thought to survive.

San Diego Zoo compares a noisy feeding sloth bear to which household machine?

A vacuum cleaner is the zoo's comparison because the bear sucks termites up through a gap in its teeth with loud slurps. It first blows the loose dust away.

Adult sloth bears lack which teeth, leaving a gap through which they suck up termites?

Upper incisors are missing from the middle of an adult's top jaw, so the mouth works like a drinking straw. The big canines beside the gap remain as weapons.

The sloth bear's old name, the labiated bear, refers to which stretchy feature that can reach over its nose?

Its lower lip is long enough to stretch past its nose and helps it suck up insects. One early scientific name, Ursus labiatus, pointed at the same feature.

With fewer than 20,000 thought to remain in the wild, the sloth bear holds which IUCN Red List status?

Vulnerable is the sloth bear's listing because farms, plantations and settlements keep eating into its forests. No reliable large-scale count has ever been made.

Sloth bears climb trees to knock down which sweet prize, then eat it off the forest floor?

Honeycombs also go into the half-digested fruit mix that mothers are reported to bring up for their cubs. It sets into a hard cake known as bear's bread.

Sloth bears use their long, sickle-shaped claws, which cannot be pulled in like a cat's, mainly for which task?

Digging into rock-hard termite mounds is the claws' main job, and it makes for an awkward walk. The same long claws make adults slower climbers than black bears.

Sloth bears share their pale chest mark with which smaller relative, the smallest of all living bears?

The sun bear wears an orange-to-cream chest patch that gave it its name. Such marks are thought to work as a threat display against predators.

Which giant herbivore, known to stay calm near big cats, has been reported to charge sloth bears that come close?

The Asian elephant will not tolerate a sloth bear nearby, and nobody knows why. Indian rhinos react the same way.

Poachers kill sloth bears mainly to harvest which organ, long prized as a traditional medicine?

Gall bladder bile contains ursodeoxycholic acid, which laboratories can now make synthetically. The lab version is safer and spares the animals.

Sloth bears poached in India have been smuggled into which neighbouring country to be set against dogs?

Pakistan has an illegal blood sport called bear-baiting, in which dogs are set on a captive bear. The cruelty law that bans it dates from British rule in 1890.

Which Indian state, home to the Jungle Book's Seoni hills, recorded 48 deaths from sloth bear attacks in five years?

Madhya Pradesh sits in the forested heart of India, where crowded villages press right up against the animals' habitat. Nearly 700 more people were injured over the same years.

Handlers of dancing sloth bears were once hired to stage spectacles for which dynasty of Indian emperors?

Mughal emperors kept the handlers busy staging trained-animal shows. Centuries later the same acts had become cheap roadside entertainment for villagers and tourists.

Which nomadic community of India made its living for centuries by leading dancing sloth bears from town to town?

Kalandars depended on the animals for most of their income, so rescuers offered each handler training and start-up money for a new trade in exchange for the bear.

Which charity, founded in 1995, reported in 2009 that India's last dancing sloth bear had been saved?

Wildlife SOS had counted more than 1,200 performing bears on India's roads in 1996. It now keeps the rescued animals for life, since they cannot safely return to the forest.

A rescue centre for former dancing sloth bears, opened in 1999 inside a bird sanctuary, lies just west of which city?

Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, sat on the tourist highway where hundreds of the animals once performed. Young men from the handlers' community now work at the centre.

Daroji, described as Asia's first sloth bear sanctuary, lies near the ruins of Hampi in which Indian state?

Karnataka declared the reserve in 1994 on barren, rocky hillocks that foresters have since turned green. Visitors watch from a tower as the animals come down at dusk.

The sloth bear of Mysore, blamed for at least 12 deaths, was finally shot by which hunter and author?

Kenneth Anderson needed three hunts to stop the animal, spraining his ankle while carrying a dying victim on the second. He told the story in Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers.

The long, shaggy fur of sloth bears stays fairly cool in tropical heat because it is missing what?

An undercoat would trap too much warmth, so the animal has only long outer hair. That shag still does a job, shielding the skin from biting insects.

Despite a diet of insects and fruit, sloth bears belong to which order of mammals, alongside cats and dogs?

Carnivora is defined by ancestry, not by menu, so it holds every living bear. Pilosa, the order of the true sloths, is no close relation.

Zoologists call sloth bears myrmecophagous because they feed on termites and which other insects?

Ants, termites and other insects make up 95 percent of the menu when no trees are in fruit. In the monsoon the animals switch to mango, fig and other fruit.

Which actor voiced Baloo, called a sloth bear by Bagheera, in Disney's 2016 remake of The Jungle Book?

Bill Murray's Baloo is named as a sloth bear on screen, though the animators gave him a look closer to a Himalayan brown bear.

Adult sloth bears usually have badly worn teeth because of what they swallow along with their insect meals?

Soil is sucked up and chewed with every mouthful of termites, and the grit slowly ruins the teeth. The cheek teeth are also smaller than those of other bears.

Sloth bears survive in India and Nepal but are now considered regionally extinct in which neighbouring country?

Bangladesh no longer has any wild sloth bears, and the species may have vanished from Bhutan as well. In India it is now common only inside parks and reserves.

The first scientific name of sloth bears used Bradypus, the genus of three-toed sloths, a word meaning what?

Slow foot was a poor fit for an animal that can outrun a person. Later specimens showed it was a true bear, yet the common name stuck.

Termite mounds that feed sloth bears have been destroyed to supply fine earth for surfacing what?

Tennis courts have been surfaced with the fine-grained material of the mounds, an indirect threat to the animals. Termites matter because they are on hand all year.

In March and April sloth bears feast on the fallen flowers of which Indian tree, also distilled into a liquor?

Mahua is the name of both the tree and the spirit that Indian tribes have made from its flowers for centuries. The bears simply eat the petals where they fall.

Sloth bear pregnancies last anywhere from four to seven months because of which reproductive quirk?

Delayed implantation lets the fertilised egg float for months before it attaches, so the real growth of a cub takes only about two months.

Sloth bears hooked on sweets in hotel rubbish wander the streets of which hill station in the Aravalli Range?

Mount Abu residents have not retaliated against the animals, even after attacks in town. Researchers link that tolerance to religious respect for wild animals.

Three bear species, sloth bears among them, live side by side only in the hills south of which Indian river?

South of the Brahmaputra, in Assam, Manipur and Mizoram, is where the three ranges meet. The species do not fight one another, probably because each prefers different food.

Which bandleader and comedian voiced Baloo, drawn as a sloth bear, in Disney's 1967 animated The Jungle Book?

Phil Harris was told to stop acting like a bear and simply be himself at the microphone. Until that session the animators could not picture him in the part.

Sloth bears living close to people shift most of their activity to which part of the day?

Night becomes the safe time once people are around, while bears in undisturbed forest are often out by day. Mothers with cubs may also pick daylight to avoid predators.

Jessore Sloth Bear Sanctuary, set up in 1978 on the border with Rajasthan, protects the animals in which state?

Gujarat's reserve takes its name from Jessore hill, which forms its backdrop. It was declared mainly to protect the species, across about 180 square kilometres.