When people think of a bear they usually think of the black or brown bear, but there’s a bear in South America that we do not hear much about called the Tremarctos ornatus, also known as the spectacled bear. Their coloration is a black face with spots of brown on it.

 

I think they look like pandas. Not just their looks but also their habitat. These kinds of species are adapted to dry forests and rain forests. In the forests, 90 percent of their diet is fruit trees. A fact that is interesting is that Spectacled bears stay in a fruit tree until the fruit gets ripe. It could be 2-3 days for them to wait and eat the fruit when it ripens. Spectacled bears do great in rain forest ecosystem because they're adapted to it and, it's all they know. Another reason is their diet is with all the fruit trees that they spend most of their time in waiting for their food to ripen or to hide from predators.

 

These bears also have a reproduction rate of 2-3 babies per pregnancy and the male partner stays around for about 1-2 weeks until the babies are developed enough to get food with the mom. After about one month the Spectacled bear is on it’s own like it never had a mother to take car of it. The cubs get its own food and protects itself.

  

The Spectacled bear population is growing but the amount of them are small there are over 1,000 of them in the habitats of South America. The size of the bear is small compared to the average size of a black bear or any other type of bear.

   

Their predator is the famous Jaguar; Jaguars don’t climb the fruit trees which makes it harder for the predators to reach the Spectacled bear. Something that stood out when I was typing this report is that they wait in the fruit tree till the fruit is ripened I thought it shows, how intelligent these animals really are.

 

Author: Hunter C.

Published: 05/2009

   

Sources: http://www.thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/ Photo http: animaldiversity.ummz.edu/LeAnn Bies

 

Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spectacled_Bear_Tennoji_2.jpg