Sun-bears are small, gentle creatures, and are easily tamed. In the zoo they are extremely playful, and you may often see them standing upon their hind legs and wrestling with one another, and then tumbling over and rolling upon the floor, evidently enjoying themselves very much. Their fur is smooth and glossy, and is jet-black in color, the chin and a crescent-shaped patch under the throat being white.
The Sloth-Bear
Another name for this bear is the aswail—its East-Indian name. It is perhaps the oddest of all the bears, for it has very long and shaggy hair, a flexible snout which it is always curling and twisting, and a very awkwardly and clumsily built body. It walks with a curious rolling gait, crossing its paws over one another at every step it takes. And it has a queer way of eating termites and ants by breaking open their nests with its great fore paws, blowing away the dust and fine earth, and then sucking up the insects by forcibly drawing in its breath through its lips. It makes such a noise when doing this that it can be heard from a distance of two or three hundred yards.
The sloth-bear is seldom seen abroad during the daytime, for the odd reason that the skin of the soles of its feet is so delicate that it cannot bear to walk upon ground which is heated by the rays of the sun. Sometimes, when a hunter has driven one of them from its lair and pursued it by day, he has found its feet most terribly scorched and blistered when at last he killed it, simply because it had been obliged to walk over rocks on which the midday sun was beating down.
When a mother sloth-bear has little ones, she always carries them about on her back. If she stops to feed they at once jump down, but always spring up again as soon as she moves on. Even when they are quite big they travel about in this way, and a sloth-bear may often be seen with a cub as large as a retriever dog perched upon her back, and another one trotting along by her side. And from time to time she makes the little ones change places.
If a mother is wounded while her cubs are with her, she always seems to think that one of them must have bitten her, and immediately gives them both a good sound box on the ears. If several of these animals are together, and one of them is struck by a bullet, it begins to howl and cry at the top of its voice. The other bears at once come running up to see what is the matter, and begin to howl and cry too, out of pure sympathy for its sufferings. Then the wounded animal thinks that they have caused his injuries, and begins to cuff them with his paws. They, of course, strike back, and very soon all the bears are buffeting and biting and scratching one another. They must be very stupid creatures, mustn't they?
The sloth-bear is a little more than five feet long when fully grown, and stands from twenty-seven to thirty-three inches in height at the shoulder. In color it is black, with a white crescent-shaped mark on the upper part of its chest, like that of the sun-bear.
The Panda
Besides the true bears, there are a number of smaller animals which belong to the same tribe.
One of these is the panda, wah, or bear-cat, which is only about as big as a rather large cat. It is rusty red in color, with darker rings upon the tail, the tip of which is black. The face is white, and the lower parts of the body are very dark brown.