Sloth bear
| Sloth bear Temporal range: Late Pliocene to Early – recent |
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| A sloth bear at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Caniformia |
| Family: | Ursidae |
| Subfamily: | Ursinae |
| Genus: |
Melursus Meyer, 1793 |
| Species: | M. ursinus |
| Binomial name | |
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Melursus ursinus Shaw, 1791 |
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| Sloth bear range (black – former, green – extant) |
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| Synonyms | |
The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), also known as the labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution. The population isolated in Sri Lanka is considered a subspecies. Compared to brown and black bears, sloth bears have lankier builds, long, shaggy coats that form a mane around the face, long, sickle-shaped claws, and a specially adapted lower lip and palate used for sucking insects. Sloth bears breed during spring and early summer and give birth near the beginning of winter. They feed on termites, honeybee colonies, and fruits. Sloth bears sometimes attack humans who encroach on their territories. Historically, humans have drastically reduced their habitat and diminished their population by hunting them for food and products such as their bacula and claws. These bears have been used as performing pets due to their tameable nature. The sloth bear is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN due to habitat loss and poaching.
Initially thinking it to be related to the South American sloths, Shaw and Nodder in 1791 called the species Bradypus ursinus, noting that it was bear-like, but giving weight to the long claws and the absence of upper middle incisors. Meyer (1793) identified it as a bear and called it Melursus lybius, and in 1817, de Blainville called it Ursus labiatus because of the long lips. Iliger called it Prochilus hirsutus, the Greek genus name indicating long lips, while the specific name noted its long and coarse hair. Fischer called it Chondrorhynchus hirsutus, while Tiedemann called it Ursus longirostris.
Sloth bears may have reached their current form in the early , the time when the bear family specialized and dispersed. A fragment of fossilized humerus from the Pleistocene, found in Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool Basin is identical to the humerus of a modern sloth bear. The fossilized 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. M. theobaldi itself had teeth intermediate in size between sloth bears and other bear species, though its palate was the same size as the former species, leading to the theory that it is the sloth bear's direct ancestor. Sloth bears probably arose during the mid-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.
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Wikipedia