Sloth Bear Diet

What do sloths eat.

Sloth bear diet. They primarily eat termites and ants and have also been called labiated bears because of their long lower lip and palate used for sucking insects. Their long lower lips can be stretched over the outer edge of their noses and lack upper incisors thus allowing the bears to suck up large numbers of insects. As opportunistic omnivores they will feed on other types of food when available. Among plants ziziphus mauritiana was the important food source during winter 23 33 and summer 20 29.

Beetles grubs and other insects round out their diet. The sloth bear melursus ursinus is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the indian subcontinent it feeds on fruits ants and termites it is listed as vulnerable on the iucn red list mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. It has also been called labiated bear because of its long lower lip and palate used for sucking up insects. Sloth bears consumed 15 22 taxa per season including a number of insects and plant species.

The sloth bear is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the indian subcontinent. In the wild their favourite food is termites. A limiting factor to their diet would be the hardness of termite mounds that season. A sloth s diet is rich in fiber and its digestion can take up to a month.

Sloths are part of the suborder folivora. Termites dug out of their cement hard nest mounds and some ants are year round staples. They dig into termite mounds with their sharp claws then blow through their big lips to brush the dirt away from the insects. For example in the summer months when fruiting season is underway fruits and fresh vegetation will be part of their diet.

When trees are in fruit usually during the monsoon season sloth bears dine on mango fig ebony and other fruits as well as on flowers. It has a long shaggy fur a mane around the face. The bears use their long curved claws to rip open the termite mounds and slurp up the insects. Sloths mostly feed on buds leaves and tender shoots.

Termites were found to be the most consumed and important feed item throughout the year importance value. Some sloth species can also consume a vast range of insects nestling bird eggs lizards and carrion. Because of their very slow metabolism sloths actually need very little food. During non fruiting season insects constitute 95 percent of a sloth bear s diet.

Sloths are arboreal creatures commonly found in south and central america. Sloths are considered as the slowest mammals and this is attributed to their meager metabolic rates. Sloth bears climb trees and knock down honeycombs later collecting the honey from the forest floor. It turns out that they also live in many other trees but are not spotted there as easily as in cecropia trees.

Then they suck them up. During food shortages sloth. They may eat insects small lizards and carrion however their diet consists mostly of buds tender shoots and leaves including leaves from the cecropia tree. Termites are their favorite food and they use their keen sense of smell to locate termite mounds.

It used to be thought that sloths ate mostly cecropia leaves because they were often spotted in cecropia trees. Sloth bears have a long shaggy fur a mane around the face and long sickle shaped claws.