India, a land of rich culture and glory is house to many religions and castes. Moreover, the country is known as one of the largest Democracy in the world.
We are known for our rich culture. Apart from this the beautiful nature, varied species of animals, plants, and birds here are also well known.
We can find many wildlife sancturies here. Especially some species which are endangered are conserved in sancturies. One such endangered animal is the Sloth bear.
The sloth bear also known as the Indian bear, is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. It feeds on fruits, ants and termites. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. It is the only species in the genus Melursus.
It has also been called “labiated bear” because of its long lower lip and palate used for sucking up insects. It has a long, shaggy fur, a mane around the face, and long, sickle-shaped claws. Sloth bears may have reached their current form in the Early Pleistocene, the time when the bear family specialised and dispersed.
The fossilised skulls of a bear once named Melursus theobaldi found in the Shivaliks from the Early Pleistocene or Early Pliocene are thought by certain authors to represent an intermediate stage between sloth bears and ancestral brown bears. Sloth bears probably arose during the Middle Pliocene and evolved in the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear shows evidence of having undergone a convergent evolution similar to that of other ant-eating mammals.
Sloth bears adults are a medium-sized species though weight can range variously from 55 to 105 kg in typically-sized females and from 80 to 145 kg in typically-sized males. Exceptionally large specimen of females can scale up to 124 kg and males up to 192 kg. The average weight of sloth bears from the nominate subspecies in Nepal was 95 kg in females and 114 kg in males.
Sloth bear muzzles are thick and long, with small jaws and bulbous snouts with wide nostrils. They have long lower lips which can be stretched over the outer edge of their noses, and lack upper incisors, thus allowing them to suck up large numbers of insects. The premolars and molars are smaller than in other bears, as they do not chew as much vegetation.
The sloth bear’s global range includes India, the Terai of Nepal, temperate climatic zones of Bhutan and Sri Lanka. It occurs in a wide range of habitats including moist and dry tropical forests, savannahs, scrublands and grasslands. The breeding season for sloth bears varies according to location: in India, they mate in April, May, and June, and give birth in December and early January, while in Sri Lanka, it occurs all year. Sows gestate for 210 days, and typically give birth in caves or in shelters under boulders. Litters usually consist of one or two cubs, or rarely three.
Sloth bears are expert hunters of termites and ants, which they locate by smell.
In Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kerala, seeds of six tree species eaten and excreted by sloth bears (Artocarpus hirsuta, A. integrifolia, Cassia fistula, Mangifera indica, Zizyphus oenoplina) did not see significantly different percentages of germination when compared to germinated seeds that had not been passed through the gut of the bears. However, seeds germinated much faster after being ingested by bears for three species, Artocarpus hirsuta, Cassia fistula, and Zizyphus oenoplina. This experiment suggests that sloth bears may play an important role in seed dispersal and germination, with effects varying by tree species.
IUCN estimates that fewer than 20,000 sloth bears survive in the wilds of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka. The sloth bear is listed in Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which provides for their legal protection. Commercial international trade of the sloth bear (including parts and derivatives) is prohibited.