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.

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