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The Spectacled Bear, also known as Andean Bear, has black fur with a disctincitve beige-coloured marking across its face and upper chest. Males can weigh up to 130 kg, and females 60kg. They are located in few areas of South America, including Western Venezuela, Equador, Peru, Western Bolivia and Panama. It is the only bear native to South America. Next to Panda Bears they are the most endangered species of bear in the world, though their survival has depended mostly on their fantastic ability to traverse even the highest trees of the Andes Amazonian Forest Basin.
Habitat
The bears make their habitat around the Andes Tropical basin, where an abundance of water and vegetation provides an adaquate supplement to their very basic dietary needs of roots, leaves, shoots, berries, occassioanlly insects, rodents and carrion. They are nocturnal and crepuscular, and it does not truly annually hibernate (though it will den up in inclement weather). Being an arboreal bear, it live mostly in dens near to high canopy tropical rainforest, or occasionally in the surrounding trees to avoid danger of predatory mammals.
The Young bear has an instinctive urge to climb trees, rocks and cliffsides from birth as the inordinately protective mother teaches it to reach the highest and most nutritious foods. They are able to reach a climax community with their habitat in which a balance of output and input of vegetation and nutrients occurs, and the bears have learned to take only what is necessary for their apetite satisfaction.
Society Although the bears tend to isolate themselves from one another to conserve the natural produce and food supplies from their habitat biomes, when encountered by both human and spectacle intruders, they will react in a docile but cautious manner as long as one remains a distant threat, unless the progeny of the mother is endangered. They have been known to maintain friendly society with one another when they encounter each other, but maternal mothers are recorded to have attacked poachers in an extremely brutal fashion, though no deaths have been recorded by South American State Governments.  Spectacle Bear's Cub
Adaptations The Spectacled Bear is adapted to the rainforest as it has a very keen sense of smell and large nose for finding food in small soil crevices and on high tree canopies, and furthermore it has sharp, elongated claws for digging root systems and uprooting soil fauna etc.
The bear can also identify different species of bears by recognition of the Spectacle Marking on this specie's nose and upper chest, and finally, the bear is able to plan its pregnancy and labour in order to give birth in the most plentiful food season.
External Links BBC Spectacled Bear Conservation (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/conservat.../books.shtml)
Costa Rican Spectacled Bear (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1019_costacloud.html)
Venezuelan Spectacled Bear (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial/nt/nt0175_pto.htm)
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