Specimen Showcase | The Giant Insect Vacuum

Many people are familiar with the character of Baloo in The Jungle Book🐒, but do you know which bear species it represents? It is a sloth bear 🐻, a species found on the Indian subcontinent and neighbouring regions. Unfortunately, the representation used in the 1967 Disney movie is rather inaccurate, not only for the dancing and singing, although we’ll see that this species can be quite loud, but also for its morphological appearance. So let’s correct this here and tell you more about this unique bear species.

The sloth bear, 𝘔𝘦𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘴 (Shaw, 1791) is mostly found in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It is characterized by its shaggy black coat and long and whitish V or Y-shaped patch of fur on its chest. This white patch is also found in the Asiatic black bear (𝘜𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘴), and is thought to act as a threat display when the bear stands on its hind legs to scare off predators such as tigers🐯. Sloth bears are also the only bears that have long hairs behind their ears👂🏻. They also have a heavier coat around their neck and shoulders that forms a mane, making them look extra fluffy.

Besides their unique looks, sloth bears present a special diet: they are myrmecophagous! This means that their diet is mainly composed of ants and termites 🐜. Feeding on social insect colonies is actually widespread in the Ursidae family (the bear family), but in other species, it is usually limited to a particular time of year; such as in the early spring and right after hibernation when other food sources may be scarce. In the sloth bear, however, we will see that this species has evolved several astonishing adaptations to specialize in feeding on these small but abundant insects.

Sloth bears possess long sickle-shaped claws used for digging up insect nests. Their front feet are slightly turned inward, which presumably allows them to dig up more efficiently🕳. Maybe less conspicuous but quite important for their digging and feeding activities, sloth bears also have highly adapted muzzles (nose and mouth), with a relatively long and fat snout, and a hard bony palate (roof of the mouth) and extensible lips👄. In addition, sloth bears do not have upper incisors and have a gap in their upper row of teeth🦷, which altogether acts as their own built-in straw to slurp up termites and ants. In fact, due to their unique claws and teeth features, the European zoologist, George Shaw actually thought that this bear species were related to the tree sloth🦥, hence naming them sloth bears.

Sloth bears do not have upper incisors and have a gap in their upper row of teeth, which altogether acts as their own built-in straw to slurp up termites and ants.

If you are a 120-145 kg bear, you will need a lot of ants and termites to support this mass. Fortunately, the bear is equipped with an excellent sense of smell👃🏼 to locate insect nests from far away and then dig up to 3 feet underground. Upon reaching the nest, they use their claws to dig until they reach the large colonies deep in the nest. While doing this, sloth bears can also completely close their nostrils to prevent dust from entering their body, and blow away loose soil with violent puffs 🌬with their mouth. They then use their specialized muzzle to suck the ants or termites up like a vacuum. The sucking noise is very loud and can often be heard from up to 100 m away! To no surprise, adult sloth bears often have poor teeth conditions🤢. This is due to the amount of soil they suck up and chew when eating insects. Sloth bears may need dentist appointments too!🧑🏻‍⚕️

The diet of sloth bear is, however, not exclusive to social insects, but also includes seeds, fruits🍎, other plant material🌱 and honey🍯. They can climb trees to reach beehives up high and then knock them down to collect the honey later. However, compared to their black bear counterparts they are weaker tree-climbers due to their long claws getting in the way. Sloth bears are very fond of honey. In fact, sloth bears feed their cubs a mixture of half-digested fruits and pieces of honeycomb that they regurgitate out. The sticky mixture hardens into a dark yellow bread-like🥖 mass and is given to their young. The mixture called “bear’s bread” is even treated as a delicacy by some local people. Would you dare to try some !? 😳 Well, maybe not, as the diet of the sloth bear also includes a few birds and mammals, which may be scavenged around.

If you would like to observe the sloth bears unique features up close, with no risk of food poisoning, come and see by yourself at the HKBM along with thousands of other amazing species!

Text: Jasmine Wong

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