The sun bear is the smallest of all the Ursidae bears it is fully grown when it reaches 4 foot and weighs between 30-60 kgs but average between 20-40 kgs. Males grow larger than the females do and they have short hair to suit their climate of the tropical rain forests of southeast Asia. These bears have no fur on their feet and have long claws with turned in paws that make them excellent climbers. The stories you hear of bears loving honey came from this bear, they would attempt to climb anything to get to their honey and the shape of their paws allows them to do so.

This bear has small rounded ears and a shorter snout than other bears but has an extra long tongue for licking out honey from bee hives. Its tongue has a length of 10 inches and is long and slender to allow it to extract honey with ease. These sun bears are either black or brown but have another characteristic that other bears dont have, they have a horse shoe shaped ring of hair of a orange yellowish colour that hangs around its neck like a necklace effect, usually they have the same colour hair that surrounds their eyes and snout. These markings is the reason it is called the sun bear.

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You can see from the photo that the palm of its paws match he same colour of its nose and eyes and necklace like hair. These bears wouldnt be as vicious as its cousins the grizzly or brown bear or even half the size either. These are a placid bear that only eat smaller things like rodents and lizzards and none have been known to attack humans. Their main diet consists of eggs, berries, new soots off plants, birds, termites, bees, fruits and roots. Their powerful jaws can break nuts that they find such as coconuts and other hard shelled nuts. They detect their food by a sense of smeel because of their poor eyesight, they can smell honey from up to 200 meters away.

Unlike other bears they do not hibernate because in the rainforest they dont have winter months as harsh as the rest of the world. Because they dont hibernate they are sexualy active all year round and the female can produce 1 or 2 cubs a year. It takes nearly 100 days for a cub to be born and when it is it is born blind and bald. The cubs are totally dependant on their mothers milk for up to 18 months, after this period it starts to forage around its mother never straying too far. The cubs will stay in their mothers vasinity until they reach the age of three where they become sexualy active. The courtship of a sun bear is quite spectacular they will show such behaviour as hugging, play fighting and even head bopping with each other.

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These bears are primarily nocturnal animals and they tend to rest during the day basking in the sun. These bears have no predators apart from humans that hunt and kill them, the bears have been known to destroy plantations of crops and farmers of thes crops tend to shoot them so as they wont return. Sometimes they have been overwhelmed by Tigers or Phytons because of their curious behaviour and because of their poor eye sight they get too close for comfort.

Hunters in these areas hunt these bears for their fur and their bile that is used in Chineese medicine. These bears are being put on the red list of endangered species being driven there by hunters and profiteers and farmers.