What are sun bears?
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from curious kids all over the world, and we find interesting people to help us get some answers. There's an animal that's been on our mind recently. An animal that apparently can look a little bit like a human when it stands up on its back legs. So much so that some people recently got a little confused.

It's an animal that is important to many cultures around the world, but under threat because of humans due to loss of habitat and climate change. We're thinking about sun bears. Sun bears are one of the eight types of bears in the world, but a lot of people don't know much about them. Have you ever heard of sun bears? They live in Southeast Asia, and we asked a scientist who works closely with them to tell us a little bit more. My name is Suti Wong.

I am a wildlife biologist and a tropical forest ecologist. Su Tee Wong, who goes by Wong, studies the relationship between animals and plants that live in tropical rainforests. And he runs the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center in Malaysia. The center aims to conserve and help sun bears from extinction in the wild.

We do rescue the sun bears that were kept as illegal pets and then give them a safe home. For those bears that we can retrain and rewild, or we call rehabilitations, we are giving them a second chance in order for them to live in the forest for the second time, just like a wild bears.

We also help to educate people. Wang says the center also does research on wild bears to help protect sun bears from extinction. I mentioned that some people have recently been confused about sun bears. You might not expect it when you look at a bear standing on all four of its legs. But lots of bears can actually look kind of human when they stand up on their hind legs.

Someone recently took a video of a sun bear at a zoo in China standing on its back legs to get a better look at the people who were on the edge of its enclosure. They shared that video on social media sites, and other people thought it looked like a human in a bear costume. Wang says it's understandable that people were a little suspicious. When they stand up, they're like our height, like a human height.

and also sun bear can walk straight up just like a human because that bear was standing so straight up to a point where it doesn't look like a sun bear

That's why people thought it is a human wearing a sun bear costume. So sun bears can look a little bit like humans in bear suits when they stand up. But they're not humans, of course. They're bears. So let's learn a little bit more about them. A sun bear is the smallest bear species in the world. Looks just like other bears, but they are very small. How small is small?

If it is a female adult sun bear, they weigh about 35 kilograms. If it is a male, they would be about 45 kilograms.

That's about 75 to 100 pounds. By comparison, American black bears, which are considered medium-sized bears, weigh anywhere from about 200 to 600 pounds. And brown bears can weigh more than 1,000 pounds. That's the weight of 10 or more sun bears put together. Sun bears are obviously very small, and then they have...

short, sleek, black fur Their hair is unlike the American black bears and the brown bears where they only have one type of hair which is the very short and sleek that kind of protect them from the rain rather than keep them warm because they live in this tropical rainforest that is warm and hot year round

That makes sense. Bears living in cold climates need fur that can keep them warm. For example, polar bears living in very cold regions have a thick layer of soft fur right next to their skin and an outer layer of coarse fur called guard hairs that act a little bit like a raincoat to keep the water from getting in.

sun bears don't need that warm inner layer because they're already in a warm place. They are the true tropical bears that do not hibernate, meaning that there's no winter here and the sun bears do not sleep over the winters like the American black bears or the grizzly bears. They are found across Southeast Asia ranging from eastern tip of India, eastern tip of Bangladesh,

southern tip of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Peninsula of Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo.

Besides being small, they have some other characteristics that make them easily identifiable. For one thing, they have a yellow or white mark on their chest that's shaped like a crescent. A crescent is the shape of the moon when it's just bigger than a sliver, or the shape of the pastry known as a croissant, which means crescent in French. Sun bears also have tiny ears. They have really, really small ears compared to other animals.

Sun bears also have the longest claw compared to other bears like the American blackberries and the brown bear. They use their claws to dig the soil and also they use the claw to help them climb up to the tree all the way to the treetop.

As for what they eat, like many bears, they like lots of different foods. Sun bears is an omnivore. They eat both plants and animal material. In the forest, when the forest has fruits, the sun bear would eat these kinds of fruits as much as possible. When fruits are not available, sun bears would feed on a wide variety of invertebrates.

like ants, termites, beetles, beetle larvae. They also eat centipedes, melepids, and also earthworms. Sand bears also eat meat as well but they are not a good hunter. If they come across a tortoise in the forest, they would not hesitate to kill the tortoise with their very strong jaw and teeth and eat their meat. Their favorite food by far is honey.

Sunbeck would climb the trees very high to find a beehive and then use their very sharp teeth to rip apart the tree trunk, excavate the tree whole, and get hold of the honey. Speaking of which... My name is Mark Polio and it's my birthday. And how do birds climb trees? Happy birthday, River!

Bears climb trees using their muscles, kind of like how humans would climb trees. But they also have sharp claws to grasp the bark. Remember how Wang said sun bears have very long claws? That makes them much better climbers than humans. As for why they climb trees, mostly for protection and to get food. Here's a question from Felix.

Four years old, and I live in Cincinnati, and I want to know why do bears live in bear caves? Some bears stay in caves, if they can find them, for hibernation. But they'll also stay happily in the hollow of a tree or under tree roots, wherever they can stay safe. They sleep through the winter because it allows them to conserve energy when there's very little food around them.

And some bear species have babies while they're hibernating. And staying in a safe place like a cave or a tree hollow will keep the cubs safe while they're at their most vulnerable.

Sun bears don't hibernate and they don't use caves, but... They would sleep in tree cavities if they can find one. If not, they would sleep high on top of trees. This is the place in the rainforest where they can sleep with a dry body and also escape from blood-sucking leeches and other predators like tigers and leopards.

that may kill them if they come across one. It's not just leopards and leeches that are threats to sun bears. They are threatened because of human activities like deforestation. Humans want the valuable timber and after logging happens, humans convert the forest

into agriculture land and therefore sun bears would lost their habitat or their home when logging start it also means that humans invading or entering their habitat at night time these people would go out and hunt for their food

If they come across a sun bear, they would not hesitate to kill the sun bear and eat them. It is the same for other wildlife species that live in the forest as well. Besides deforestation and hunting and poaching, sun bears also face another threat from humans keeping them as pets. Sun bear cubs or the baby sun bears are extremely small and cute when they are little.

and humans thought they may make good pets. However, in reality, they do not make good pets. They are wild and ferocious and dangerous when they grow up. It is not a good idea to keep them as pets. Sun bears are facing a lot of threats, and the fact that they've been all over social media with that silly story about the bear at the zoo people thought might be a human in a bear suit...

actually means more people might now learn about sun bears and start to think about ways to protect them. Wang says those of you hearing about sun bears today can share the information you've learned and help other people know a little bit about these fascinating creatures. He says that of all the bear species in the world, sun bears are the least well-known. So spread the word!

Thanks to Suu Tiewang, who runs the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center in Malaysia. We have a picture of him with a sun bear on our website and our Instagram account, But Why Kids. Coming up, we'll learn a little bit more about other bears. This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. If you care about bears, you should be aware there are eight unique species to compare.

Some are fairly common, some extremely rare. This is Key Wild and Mr. Clark with a song that's simply called A Bear Song. We have a few bear facts to share.

We've been learning a little bit about sun bears. In addition to sun bears, there are seven other types of bears. Do you think you can name them all?

Let's let the song do it with us. So, sun bears, moon bears, polar bears, giant pandas, sloth bears, spectacled bears, black bears, and brown bears. How'd you do? Thanks to Key Wild and Mr. Clark for letting us use this fun song. You can find a link to the full song in our show notes.

A lot of you have sent us questions about bears over the years, and one question we get a lot is this. My name is Sanjana, and I live in Neeson, England. I'm eight years old, and my question is, why do bears and some other animals hibernate? I'm Rowan, Connecticut, and I'm four and a half years old, and my question is,

Not all bears hibernate. We just heard, for example, that sun bears don't hibernate, and neither do sloth bears, giant pandas, and spectacled bears. Polar bears will find a den to spend short amounts of time in. Their body temperature and activity levels lower, but they don't truly hibernate. Black bears, brown bears, and moon bears do hibernate. Technically, they go into what's called torpor.

We actually talked a little bit about hibernation in the very first episode we ever made. We were talking with a Vermont naturalist named Mary Holland, who spends a lot of her time outside looking for things to write about and photograph. She told us a little bit about what happens in the winter with the bears here in Vermont, black bears. Before they go to sleep in late summer, they...

go on an eating binge and they eat and eat and eat lots and lots of plants and fruits and insects and

and they get fatter and fatter and fatter. Sometimes they even double their weight. So a bear weighing 200 pounds would weigh 400 pounds, possibly. And then when they get all big and fat, they find a den to sleep in. And sometimes the den is under a root or sometimes it's in the snow under a broken branch

Or sometimes they even sleep right out in the open under some evergreen trees. But what they do is they slow down their body and their hearts beat much, much slower than when they were active. And then they also breathe much less frequently. They take a breath every 45 seconds or almost every minute, which is much slower than they normally breathe in the summer. And they go into hibernation.

So what Mary's saying is the bears get really fat so their bodies have enough energy to allow them to sleep all winter, and they slow their breathing down. It's a way to survive through several months of cold, harsh weather when there's not enough food outside to eat. Sleeping all winter is what is meant by hibernation. People didn't used to consider bears hibernators because their temperature only drops about 10 degrees. It's roughly from about...

100 degrees Fahrenheit to down to about 88 degrees Fahrenheit, about 12 degrees actually. And scientists, biologists used to think that your temperature had to drop way, way down in order to be called a hibernator. But they've since decided that bears are hibernators and you can be a hibernator even if your temperature doesn't drop very, very low.

So once they go into hibernation, they don't eat, they don't drink, they don't pee, and they don't poop. And they're in hibernation for four to five months, sometimes even longer.

And what they have is they have a plug actually in their butt that keeps them from going to the bathroom. And when they wake up in the spring in April and come out of their den, the plug comes out naturally and they start eating again. So does anything happen to bears in winter or do they just sleep?

While they're sleeping, they are using up their fat, and those cells break down and provide them with water and calories. And they also break down some of their muscle and organ tissues, and those turn into proteins to keep the bear alive. Female black bears actually give birth in January to

to tiny little cubs, anywhere from two to five of them usually, and they are actually not completely asleep. Their sleep is quite shallow so that when the baby cubs need to nurse, then the mother wakes up and arranges herself so that they can get her milk. And then when the baby cubs nap, the mother naps. It's very much like people. And so the babies, how big are they when they're born?

They weigh about half a pound, and they're roughly seven inches long. They're tiny. Very tiny, very tiny. So when they come out of hibernation in April, though, the cubs are much bigger. Are they able to feed themselves, and they have the bear fur that everybody thinks of a bear as looking like? They're not completely weaned.

I'm going to stop Mary right there for just a second. Weaned means a baby has stopped getting milk from its mother. So when the bears come out of their dens and Mary says they're not fully weaned, it means they're still getting some of their food from their mother's milk.

They look like a miniature adult. They can walk and climb. They're very agile, and they are starting to eat solid food. Usually it's some of the green vegetation that comes up earliest in the spring, often by ponds. Mary, do you think the bears dream while they're hibernating? I mean, I would dream if I was asleep for that long. I would, too.

I think I would be, yes, I would be dreaming about the coming summer and turning over logs and finding all kinds of ants to eat. That's what I'd be dreaming about. My name's Karen. I'm nine years old. I live in Beaconsfield in England. I heard that bears don't hibernate. They twerp, which means that while other animals, when they hibernate, they can't hear anything,

Bears can and can wake if a predator comes. Is that true? Yes, this is true. Bears can still hear and they can be woken up if they're disturbed while they're in their dens. Black bears don't have a ton of predators, but they can be disturbed out of hibernation by weather or by humans. That could be dangerous for the bear if there aren't enough food sources around when it comes out of its den.

Black bears usually hibernate for four or five months in places like Vermont, where the winters are cold and dark. In Alaska and northern Canada, they'll sometimes hibernate for six months or even more. But in some places where it's warmer and there's food throughout the winter, like Mexico, black bears will barely hibernate at all. Hi, my name is Kinga. I live in Poland. I'm five years old.

And my question is, why are bears hungry after their winter sleep? When the bears wake up, they have one mission, to gain weight. So they spend most of their time after coming out of hibernation eating, eating, eating. At the beginning of the spring, they look for tender green shoots. But over time, as trees and plants start to blossom, they find nuts and berries, and if they're lucky, things like honey or fish.

Henry in Michigan wants to know why bears eat berries. Berries are a common food source in the summer months when bears are trying to gain weight to prepare for hibernation. And bears can actually eat tens of thousands of berries in a day during the summer. Plus, berries have a lot of good energy, and they taste good.

Bears can also get a taste for human garbage and bird seed. That's not so great. So if you share your habitat with bears, you should try to keep your trash cans away from them. And you might want to think about putting away your bird feeder during the spring, summer, and fall months so bears can't get at them.

That's it for this episode. If you have a question for But Why, have an adult record it. It's easy to do on a smartphone using a voice recording or voice memo app. Then have your adult email the file to questions at butwhykids.org. We can't answer every question we get, but we love hearing from you and knowing what's on your mind.

But Why is produced at Vermont Public by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, and distributed by PRX. Our engagement producer is Kiana Haskin, and we want to offer special thanks to some of the people who also make But Why awesome. Our educational coordinator, Heather DeHamel, and graphic designer, Laura Nakasaka. Our theme music was composed by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PRX.