The Indian sloth bear is one of the helpless victims of animal cruelty on the Indian sub-continent. They are not alone, because other bear species suffer horrible abuse as well. Sloth bears are killed every year for their gallbladders, also the claws, bile, and genital organs. The bile, which is excreted from the gallbladder, is used in Chinese folk medicine along with the genitals. The claws will be expensive trinkets to sell on the black market along with the other bear products. Severe poaching of sloth bears for their body parts and taking the bear cubs to be trained for "dancing," has taken its toll on the population. Sloth bears are now on the World Conservation Union's red list of threatened animals. Human encroachment into their wild habitat by quarrying, illegal tree felling, mining, and mass deforestation, has scattered the bears into small, fragmented groups in south and east India. There is a sub-species of the sloth bear in Sri Lanka as well.

 

     The sloth bear is the only bear that routinely carries her young on her back when out foraging. She has to travel a fair distance sometimes, to get enough food for her and the cubs. She will raid many ant and termite nests, which are their preferred diet. They love honey as well. They like it so much, they share the name "honey bears" with the sun bear, who is also very fond of honey. The sloth bear's long, curved claws help when climbing trees to get at the bee's nests, also shaking fruit out of trees to feed the cubs on the ground below. When food is scarce however, the bears sometimes raid food crops grown by farmers in the area. This causes bear/man confrontations, resulting in more bear deaths and sometimes human fatalities.

 

     When the sloth bear cubs are grabbed by poachers, they are sometimes taken out of their dens much too soon. A cub usually doesn't leave the den until it is 3 months old, but poachers have taken them as young as 5 weeks. As many as 70% of the babies may not make it to adulthood, because the cubs just don't survive the animal cruelty and lack of nutrition. They are put in sacks and taken to Kalandar (Qalandar) villages to be sold and trained as dancing bears. Kalandar men are the traditional trainers that make the bears perform silly antics and dances for the tourists. They may go to rural villages when the men think it isn't safe to be near the cities. If caught making the bears dance, the owner may be fined and have the bear confiscated, because bear dancing has been illegal since 1972. The Indian government has not been able to enforce the law consistently, due to the fact that there were so many confiscated bears when the law was first enacted. There weren't enough large, secure facilities to house all the rescued bears humanely. The zoos wouldn't take them because they had been abused so much that they couldn't risk the safety of their employee's around the bears. Many of the bears had health issues and would have required surgery, followed by medical care during the recovery process. When a sloth bear is rescued, it can take as much as a year for it to be rehabilitated. The horrible animal cruelty and abuse can cause the bear to have mental, as well as physical issues.

 

     In order for a wild bear to be "trained", it has to know that its owner is the boss. This is accomplished by alternately beating and starving the bear until it does what is required. At only 6 months old, a crude iron needle is heated and driven into the cub's sensitive muzzle or through its palate. A ring or rope is pulled through the raw wound so that the trainer can control the bear, by causing extreme pain when the bear doesn't follow the commands. There is no anesthesia used when this excruciating mutilation takes place. Male bear cubs are castrated to make them less aggressive, again no pain killers or antibiotics are ever used. By the time the sloth bear is 1 year old, its teeth have all been broken off using a metal rod. The reason for this brutality, is to keep the bear from biting the owner or any of the audience. Sometimes its claws are pulled out or broken off as well. Now the bear can never go back to the wild, because it wouldn't be able to chew a normal,  wild bears diet, even if the owner could afford to buy it. So now the sloth bear has to eat a mushy mixture that doesn't have enough nutrition for it, so the bear becomes malnourished. Some bears have gone blind from the lack of nutrition, but the Kalandar still make them dance. The sloth bears must endure the long-term affects of the animal cruelty for the remainder of their short, miserable lives.

 

     As if what the bear has already endured isn't enough, the "training" consists of making the bear stand on hot coals.  In a futile attempt to escape the pain, the bear jumps from one  foot to the other while the owner bangs a drum or other object. The bear must learn to lift his feet in time with the beat of the drum, to "dance". Sometimes heated metal plates are used for the bear to stand on and "dance". This hellish torture continues until the bear learns to pick up its feet on cue and perform whatever other tricks the owner teaches him. The beating/starvation strategy continues until the bear's spirit is broken, then its dragged from place to place to perform when commanded. This dancing bear show earns the owner about enough rupees to equal 65 to 70 dollars per month, if compared with the American dollar. The owner and bear travel for miles to find villagers or tourists who will pay to see the bear dance. Often in the hot sun, with temperatures reaching into the 80s, this torment goes on for 6-10 hours a day, every day. Bears subjected to this animal abuse rarely live beyond 7-8 years, while the wild bears are estimated to live between 20 and 30 years.

 

      How long can this continue before the sloth bear becomes extinct? There are a number of wonderful people committed to the rescue of the dancing sloth bears. Progress has been made on many fronts, most noticeably with the opening of 4 bear sanctuaries near Agra, India. There is so much more to be done and every little contribution helps rescue more abused, emaciated, sometimes desperately sick animals. I know that every caring person who reads this will want to reach out and help these poor bears.