Sloth Bear at Satpura National Park in central India, in Madhya Pradesh

From the archive record

Sloth Bear (Melursus Ursinus) - an insect eating mammal at Satpura National Park in Madhya Pradesh, India. The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), also known as the Stickney bear or labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous species of bears found wild within the Indian Subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the Pleistocene and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution. The population isolated in Sri Lanka is considered a subspecies. Unlike 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