Animal Facts - Sloth Bear
Sloth Bear Habits and Biology - part 2
Sri Lankan Sloth Bears may mate at any time of the year, while the Indian Sloth Bears’ breeding season is from April to June.
Sloth Bears make a lot of noise when mating and often hug each other and pretend to fight. The female builds a nest in a den or cave, or under rocks, and 180 to 210 days later one to three cubs are born.
The tiny cubs weigh about 300 to 500 grams (10.5 to 17.5 ounces) and can’t see until they are three weeks old. They have strong toes and front legs and can walk at four weeks.
Then they go out into the forest with their mother, riding on her back and holding on to her shaggy hair. Sloth Bears are the only bear species where the cubs ride on their mothers backs most of the time to move around.
They drink their mother’s milk for up to three years, but start eating other food after two or three months. When they are independent and weigh about 22 kilograms (50 pounds) they start to travel on their own.
Adult bears live on their own in the wild, unless they are mating or when females have cubs. Sometimes a male bear may live with a female and her cubs while the cubs are growing up, but they don’t usually live all the time in families.
Sloth Bears don’t mind sharing where they live with other bears, but they have their own territories (piece of land) where they live and find food.
They scratch trees with their claws and teeth to mark their territory, and they sometimes leave their faeces (poo) on the ground around a tree too. Scientists think they do this more in the mating season.
Sloth Bears make several different sounds, but scientists don’t know what they mean.
Scientists think that Sloth Bears might live for about 20 years in the wild, but they don’t know for sure. The bears live to about 40 years of age in zoos.