Sun Bear

It weighs less than a large dog and carries a tongue that can extend some 20 to 25 centimetres, which is the whole design: claws and jaws to breach a bee nest or a termite-riddled trunk, and a tongue to empty it. Loose skin at the neck is thought to help it twist free when something larger takes hold. Sun bears also open hard-shelled forest fruit, and their excavation of nesting trees creates cavities that hornbills and flying squirrels later use.

Almost everything working against the species is trade or conversion. Lowland dipterocarp forest is the most commercially valuable and most heavily logged habitat in Southeast Asia, and cubs orphaned in the process end up as pets or in bile farms, where bears are kept for a gall bladder secretion still sold as medicine. Rescue centres in Borneo now hold animals that cannot be released because they never learned the forest.