the glasses or Andes-bear is the single surviving descendant of the ice age-like Neuweltbären, for which one calls short-muzzle-bears (subfamily Tremarctinae).
Shape The males this twilight - and day-active bears reach only one shoulder-height of 70-80 cm and are the smallest today living real bears with it. The females still remain considerably smaller than the males. The fur of the glasses-bears is dense and mainly black. They have its name from a whitish, often glasses-good drawing in the face. Frequently, however, particularly with the Bolivian forms, it can be missing.
Spread The animals live in high-alpine tropical and subtropical rain-forests of South America, by name this of the Andes.
Way of life We find both loners and mother-families with the glasses-bears. The glasses-bear is an excellent climber and sleeps in tree-caves or more frequently still in home-made tree-nests. its mainly vegetarian food from fruits, particularly from Kakteen, tender instincts and palm-shoots, it adds occasionally also meat-meals, that consist of small animals of all the type. Only rarely, it assaults at bigger game or pets, then usually at llamas. In living together, characteristic trilling contact-lutes play a big role.
Reproduction The pregnancy of the females lasts 8-81/2 months. They bring to the world, that stays with the mother over longer time, in a tree-cave after it up to 3 young.
Since there are only few homestead-observations glasses-bear over this and it is among the rarest charges in the zoological gardens, is only extraordinarily little known over its biology. its next relatives are not how one, the North American black-bears but the southeast-Asian Malay-bears, could suspect.
Endangering The glasses-bear, who is still pursued in sharing of its spread-area, is threatened by the extinction.
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