Status
Habitat
Range
Group
A bear built as a vacuum, and the one that most often meets people head-on.
The palate is unusually vaulted, the lips are loose and mobile, and the two central upper incisors are simply absent — together, a gap and a chamber for suction. The bear rips a termite mound open with claws up to eight centimetres long, then blows out the dust and inhales the insects, a sequence audible from a hundred metres.
It is also, per encounter, among the most dangerous large mammals in South Asia. Sloth bears have poor eyesight, forage with their head down in thick scrub, and share that scrub with people collecting firewood and mahua flowers; startled at close range they go forward rather than away. India records hundreds of maulings a year, and the mitigation is mundane — noise, group movement, and not walking the same paths at dusk.
The open shelf
More frames of the sloth bear
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, eighteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.
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