Sloth Bear

[Wolverine]

(03-10-2018, 06:26 PM)brotherbear Wrote: I have just finished reading numerous descriptions of sloth bear behavior as related to aggression. It appears that there are two opposite opinions on this subject. One side claims the sloth bear to be perhaps the world's most aggressive bear. This because, unlike other tree-climbing bear species, the sloth bear prefers to stand his ground against enemies such as leopard or even tiger. Also because each year there are serious human injuries and even death due to sloth bear attacks.
The other side claims that the sloth bear is not normally aggressive. His survival strategy to fight rather than flee up a tree is simply a different survival strategy that most often works unless ambushed from behind. As for people being attacked, sloth bears are very noisy feeders and are thus easily taken by surprise. Their eye-site and hearing are poor ( according to a few articles I read ). Their Peripheral [b]vision is extremely poor. [/b]

One of the reasons for the numerous attacks on humans as long as I know is the fact that sloth bears are used to sleep very DEEP on the ground and often don't hear approaching man or animal until the very last moment when they are critically close to the napping bear and it has no choise but to attack. The fact that sloth bear sleep deep on the ground (not on the tree) in the jungles infested with large and deadly predators shows that this animal is very self-confident and trust to its own fighting abilities. It has survived for many thousand years in probably the most dangerous wild habitat in the planet - jungles of Hindustan, infested with tigers, lions, panthers, dholes, wolves, hyenas etc. Surviving of such a relatively small animal weighting on average only 120 kg in this habitat is a real heroism.

Actually I don't believe that sloth bear could survive between Indian lions. If the lion was a solitary cat as the tiger - no problem. But chances for bear (any bear) to survive among lion prides are close to zero. That's why in Gir forest there are no sloth bears (we discussed on this topic with Rishi-boy last year). Even a combination of only 2 lionesses attacking from both sides should be deadly for the bear. Reply