![]() ![]() Īt the turn of the century, the Sri Lankan sloth bear occurred throughout Sri Lanka. It has much shorter body hair, and sometimes lacks the characteristic white chest mark. The Sri Lankan sloth bear is smaller than the nominate subspecies, has a smaller skull with a condylobasal length of about 250 mm (9.8 in) in females and about 264 mm (10.4 in) in males. Sloth bear occurs in protected areas such as Shoolpaneshwar, Ratanmahal, Jessore, and Balaram Ambaji Sanctuaries. It is absent in the high mountains of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, and a broad unforested swath in the south, where Mount Abu Wildlife Sanctuary is located. The sloth bear is the most widespread bear species in India, where it mostly occurs in areas with forest cover, low hills bordering the outer range of the Himalayas from Punjab to Arunachal Pradesh. This is the nominate subspecies and has a large skull with a condylobasal length of about 290 mm (11 in) in females and about 310 mm (12 in) in males. Fischer called it Chondrorhynchus hirsutus, while Tiedemann named it Ursus longirostris. Illiger named it Prochilus hirsutus, the Greek genus name indicating long lips, while the specific name noted its long and coarse hair. In 1793, Meyer named it Melursus lybius, and in 1817, de Blainville named it Ursus labiatus because of its long lips. Shaw in 1791 named the species Bradypus ursinus. Sloth bears have been tamed and used as performing animals and as pets. Historically, humans have drastically reduced these bears' habitat and diminished their population by hunting them for food and products such as their bacula and claws. When their territories are encroached upon by humans, they sometimes attack them. Sloth bears breed during spring and early summer and give birth near the beginning of winter. It shares features of insectivorous mammals and evolved during the Pleistocene from the ancestral brown bear through divergent evolution. It is lankier than brown and Asian black bears. It has a long, shaggy fur, a mane around the face, and long, sickle-shaped claws. It has also been called "labiated bear" because of its long lower lip and palate used for sucking up insects. It is the only species in the genus Melursus. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. The sloth bear ( Melursus ursinus), also known as the Indian bear, is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. ![]()
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