{"id":2177275,"date":"2024-08-28T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2177275"},"modified":"2024-08-24T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T09:00:00","slug":"why-do-sloth-bears-attack-humans-new-study-links-behaviour-to-tiger-defence-mechanisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/why-do-sloth-bears-attack-humans-new-study-links-behaviour-to-tiger-defence-mechanisms\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do sloth bears attack humans? New study links behaviour to tiger defence mechanisms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ponder the most dangerous bear in the world, and you might naturally think of the mighty polar bear \u2013 king of the Arctic and most carnivorous of ursids \u2013 or the big and ornery North American grizzly. But the species that actually mauls the most people on average each year? The smaller, galumphing, and far less predatory sloth bear of the Indian subcontinent.<\/p>\n

Basically anteaters in ursid disguise, sloth bears are uniquely specialised for feeding on ants and termites (aka myrmecophagy); seasonally ripe fruits and honey help round out their diet. Yet a recent tally of all recorded attacks on people by large carnivores across the world between 1950 and 2019 attributed more to sloth bears than any other species \u2013 various dreaded big cats included.<\/p>\n

The aggressiveness of the otherwise seemingly placid bug-slurping sloth bear has been long been recognised, even in tiger- and leopard-prowled country. \u201cShould an unarmed wayfarer meet Master Bruin engaged in looking over his orchards, or sauntering over his domain, let him step aside silently lest he have his scalp drawn over his face, or his features so altered as to be unrecognisable by his most intimate friends,\u201d wrote hunter Edward B. Baker in 1887\u2019s Sport in Bengal.<\/p>\n

\"Sloth<\/a>
Sloth bears are equipped with impressive claws for digging into termite and ant nests. Image: Lilla Frerichs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sloth bears indeed often direct their attacks at a person\u2019s face, inflicting massive damage with their impressively long canines and claws. Earlier this month, a sloth bear killed a man and injured two others in India\u2019s Chhattisgarh state; two farmers were mauled to death and another wounded last March in Andhra Pradesh when they encountered a sloth bear in a cashew orchard.<\/p>\n

A new study published in Ecology & Evolution (from which we nabbed that Baker quote) suggests the dangerous pugnacity of the sloth bear is likely an anti-predator strategy evolved over several million years sharing the landscape with big cats \u2013 including, today, the royal Bengal tiger.<\/p>\n

Though scientifically addressed in the paper, that theory wasn\u2019t necessarily breaking news. One of the study\u2019s authors, wildlife ecologist Thomas Sharp, told the New York Times he\u2019d long asked local people living among sloth bears about their aggressiveness, and been told, \u201cIt\u2019s because they fight with tigers.\u201d<\/p>\n