Sloth bears are the world’s deadliest bear. As their habitat shrinks, India’s forest communities are finding ways to co-exist with them.<\/p>\n
For the tiger, it must have felt like easy prey: a female sloth bear and her cub, walking away from a watering hole near a safari lodge in India. The tiger stalks the bear through dry scrub, preparing to attack. That’s when things take a surprising turn.<\/p>\n
Instead of freezing or trying to escape, the sloth bear whips around, and charges at the startled-looking tiger. The tiger rears and fights back, and a 45-minute-long battle ensues, with the two biting and clawing at each other. Watch the video below to see their ferocious fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sloth bears (named due to their long claws and teeth, supposedly resembling a sloth) which live in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, are widely considered among the most aggressive<\/a> animals on the Indian subcontinent. They are known to charge explosively<\/a> at anyone they consider a threat \u2013 not just tigers, but also, humans<\/a>. One study counting large carnivore attacks on humans around the world between 1950 and 2019 found that sloth bear attacks outnumbered all other species<\/a>, including tigers, lions, wolves and any other bears. There had been 1,337 sloth bear attacks on humans during that period, compared to 1,047 by tigers, 414 by wolves, and only 23 by polar bears, for example. (Though tiger, lion and other big cat attacks on humans are deadlier \u2013 around 65%<\/a> of them are fatal to humans, whereas around 8%<\/a> of sloth bear attacks are lethal<\/a>).<\/p>\n However, sloth bears are also facing many threats<\/a> themselves, from habitat degradation to retaliation by humans<\/a>. Their population is declining<\/a>, and they have been classed as a vulnerable<\/a> species, with their global population estimated at fewer than 20,000.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sloth bears are the world’s deadliest bear. As their habitat shrinks, India’s forest communities are finding ways to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-49492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}