The Indian sloth bear is one of the helpless victims of animal cruelty on the Indian sub-continent. They are not alone, because other bears suffer horrible abuses as well. Sloth bears are killed every year for their gallbladders, also the claws, bile, and genital organs. The gallbladder and bile, which is excreted from the gallbladder, are used in Chinese folk medicine along with the genitals. The claws are expensive trinkets to sell on the black market along with the other bear products. The severe poaching of sloth bears for their body parts and taking of bear cubs to be trained for "dancing," has taken its toll on the population. It is now on the World Conservation Union's red list of threatened animals. Human encroachment into their wild habitat by quarrying, mining, illegal tree felling, and mass deforestation has scattered the bears into small, fragmented groups in south and east India. There is a sub species in Sri Lanka as well.
The sloth bear is unique because it is the only bear that routinely carries her young on her back when out foraging. She travels fair distances to get enough food for her and the cubs by raiding many ant and termite nests, which are the preferred diet of these bears. They will eat fruit that is in season, eggs, yams and other vegetables along with honey, which is also favored by the bears. They like it so much they share the name, "honey bears" with the sun bear. It is also very fond of honey/honeycomb. The sloth bear's long, curved claws are an asset when climbing trees to get at the bee's nests, also to shake fruit out of the trees to feed the cubs on the ground below. When food is scarce however, the bears sometimes raid food crops of the farmers in the area. This causes bear/man confrontations resulting in more bear deaths and sometimes human fatalities.
When the sloth bear cubs are poached, 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 adulthood because of the animal cruelty perpetrated upon them when so young. They are put in sacks and taken to Kalandar (Qalandar) villages to be sold and trained by the Kalandar as dancing bears. Kalandar men are the traditional trainers that make the bears perform silly antics and dances for the tourists. Or 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 bears, that there weren't enough facilities to house all the confiscated bears. The zoos wouldn't take them because they had been abused so much that they couldn't risk the employee's safety around them. Many of the bears have health issues and would require surgery and much supervision during their 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 man 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 do what it's commanded to do. There is no anesthesia used when this excruciating mutilation is done to the bear. 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. This brutality is done so the bear cannot bite 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, it can't eat the proper diet that it needs even if the owner could afford to buy it, so now it eats a poor mush that doesn't have enough nutrition for it and the bear becomes malnourished. Some bears have gone blind from lack of nutrition, but the Kalandars still make them dance. The animal cruelty continues for the miserable sloth bears.
As if what the bear has already endured isn't enough, the "training" consists of making the bear stand on hot coals. This makes him lift his feet alternately to escape the pain and the owner bangs a drum to make the bear learn that he must lift his feet to 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 his feet on cue and perform whatever other tricks the owner teaches him. The beating and starvation strategy continues until the bear's spirit is broken and then it is dragged from place to place to perform. This earns the owner about enough rupees to equal $65.00 to $70.00 American dollars per month. 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 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 20-30 years. How long can this continue before the sloth bear becomes extinct? There are people committed to the rescue of the dancing sloth bears and some progress has been made with the opening of 4 sanctuaries in India near Agra. There is so much more to be done and every little contribution helps to 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.
Every year wild animals are taken from the wild illegally and killed or captured for profit. There are animals being tortured or worked literally to death. They do not have the proper care or nutrition and their lives are nothing but pain. The only way they will ever be free is if we help, any way we can. I give to the WSPA as much as I can. Only 14.00 a month can help save an animal from misery and starvation. Think about it.
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