Editing Sloth bear (section)

=== Attacks on humans ===
[[File:A fragile co-existence of between sloth bears and humans at Ratanmahal Sloth Bear Sactuary, Dahod, Gujarat, India.jpg|thumb|A fragile co-existence between bears and humans at [[Ratanmahal Sloth Bear Sanctuary]], [[Dahod district]], [[Gujarat]], India]]
Sloth bears are one of the most aggressive extant bears and, due to large human populations often closely surrounding reserves that hold bears, aggressive encounters and attacks are relatively frequent, though in some places, attacks appear to be a reaction to encountering people accidentally.<ref name=":0" /> In absolute numbers, this is the species of bear that most regularly attacks humans. Only the [[Himalayan black bear]] subspecies of Asian black bear is nearly as dangerous.<ref name="Bargali, H. S. 2005">Bargali, H. S., Akhtar, N., & Chauhan, N. P. S. (2005). ''Characteristics of sloth bear attacks and human casualties in North Bilaspur Forest Division, Chhattisgarh, India''. Ursus, 16(2), 263–267.</ref><ref>Quigley, H., & Herrero, S. (2005). ''Characterization and prevention of attacks on humans''. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY SERIES-CAMBRIDGE-, 9, 27.</ref> Sloth bears likely view humans as potential predators, as their reactions to them (roaring, followed by retreat or charging) are similar to those evoked in the presence of tigers and leopards.<ref name="final"/> Their long claws, which are ideally adapted for digging at termite mounds, make adults less capable of climbing trees to escape danger, as are other bears such as Asian black bears. Therefore, sloth bears have seemingly evolved to deal with threats by behaving aggressively. For the same reason, brown bears can be similarly inclined, accounting for the relatively high incidence of seemingly non-predatory aggression towards humans in these two bear species.<ref>[[#Brown|Brown]]</ref>

According to [[Robert Armitage Sterndale]], in his ''Mammalia of India'' (1884, p.&nbsp;62):

{{Blockquote|[The sloth bear] is also more inclined to attack man unprovoked than almost any other animal, and casualties inflicted by it are unfortunately very common, the victim being often terribly disfigured even if not killed, as the bear strikes at the head and face. [[William Thomas Blanford|[William Thomas] Blanford]] was inclined to consider bears more dangerous than tigers...}}

Captain Williamson in his ''Oriental Field Sports'' wrote of how sloth bears rarely killed their human victims outright, but would suck and chew on their limbs till they were reduced to bloody pulps.<ref name="elliott">{{cite book |author=Elliott, A.|year=1868 |title=The forest, the jungle, and the prairie or, Scenes with the trapper and the hunter in many lands |url=https://archive.org/details/forestjungleand00elligoog|publisher= T. Nelson, and Sons |location=Edinburgh; and New York}}</ref> One specimen, known as the [[sloth bear of Mysore]], was responsible for the deaths of 12 people and the mutilation of 24 others. It was shot by [[Kenneth Anderson (writer)|Kenneth Anderson]].<ref name="anderson">{{cite book |author=Anderson, K. |year=1957 |chapter=The Black Bear of Mysore |title=Man Eaters and Jungle Killers |publisher=Allen & Unwin |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/ManEatersAndJungleKillers |via=archive.org|title-link=Man Eaters and Jungle Killers }}</ref> Although sloth bears have attacked humans, they rarely become [[Man-eating animal|man-eater]]s. Dunbar-Brander's ''Wild Animals of Central India'' mentions a case in which a sow with two cubs began a six-week reign of terror in [[Chandrapur district|Chanda]], a district of the [[Central Provinces and Berar|Central Provinces]], during which more than one of their victims had been eaten,<ref name="attacks">''A Book of Man Eaters'' by Brigadier General R.G. Burton, Mittal Publications</ref> while the sloth bear of Mysore partially ate at least three of its victims.<ref name="anderson"/> R.G. Burton deduced from comparing statistics that sloth bears killed more people than Asian black bears,<ref name="attacks"/> and [[Theodore Roosevelt]] considered them to be more dangerous than [[American black bears]].<ref>Roosevelt, Theodore (1983) ''Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail''. University of Nebraska Press, {{ISBN|0-8032-8913-8}}]</ref> Unlike some other bear species, which at times make mock charges at humans when surprised or frightened without making physical contact, sloth bears frequently appear to initiate a physical attack almost immediately. When people living near an aggressive population of sloth bears were armed with rifles, it was found that it was an ineffective form of defense, since the bear apparently charges and knocks the victim back (often knocking the rifle away) before the human has the chance to defend themself.<ref>Ratnayeke, S., Van Manen, F. T., Pieris, R., & Pragash, V. S. (2014). ''Challenges of large carnivore conservation: sloth bear attacks in Sri Lanka''. Human ecology, 42(3), 467–479.</ref><ref>Patil, S. B., Mody, N. B., Kale, S. M., & Ingole, S. D. (2015). ''A review of 48 patients after bear attacks in Central India: Demographics, management and outcomes''. Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery: Official Publication of the Association of Plastic Surgeons of India, 48(1), 60.</ref> In [[Madhya Pradesh]], sloth bear attacks accounted for the deaths of 48 people and the injuring of 686 others between 1989 and 1994, probably due in part to the density of population and competition for food sources.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=3783697 |author1=Rajpurohit, K. S.  |author2=Krausman, P. R.  |name-list-style=amp |year=2000|title=Human – sloth-bear conflicts in Madhya Pradesh, India|volume= 28|issue=2|pages=393–9|journal= Wildl. Soc. Bull.}}</ref> A total of 137 attacks (resulting in 11 deaths) occurred between April 1998 and December 2000 in the North Bilaspur Forest Division of [[Chhattisgarh]]. The majority of attacks were perpetrated by single bears, and occurred in kitchen gardens, crop fields, and in adjoining forests during the monsoon season.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl/Downloads/URSUS/Vol_16_2/Bargali_Akhtar_16_2_.pdf|title=Characteristics of sloth bear attacks and human casualties in North Bilaspur Forest Division, Chhattisgarh, India|journal=Ursus|year=2005|volume=16|issue=2|pages=263–267|doi=10.2192/1537-6176(2005)016[0263:COSBAA]2.0.CO;2|last1=Bargali|first1=H. S.|last2=Akhtar|first2=Naim|last3=Chauhan|first3=N. P. S.|s2cid=53633653|access-date=27 November 2009|archive-date=3 December 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101203130546/http://www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl/Downloads/URSUS/Vol_16_2/Bargali_Akhtar_16_2_.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> One Mr. Watts Jones wrote a first-hand account of how it feels to be attacked by a sloth bear, recalling when he failed to score a direct hit against a bear he had targeted:

{{Blockquote|I do not know exactly what happened next, neither does my hunter who was with me; but I believe, from the marks in the snow, that in his rush the bear knocked me over backwards in fact, knocked me three or four feet away. When next I remember anything, the bear's weight was on me, and he was biting my leg. He bit two or three times. I felt the flesh crush, but I felt no pain at all. It was rather like having a tooth out with gas. I felt no particular terror, though I thought the bear had got me; but in a hazy sort of way I wondered when he would kill me, and thought what a fool I was to get killed by a stupid beast like a bear. The shikari then very pluckily came up and fired a shot into the bear, and he left me. I felt the weight lift off me, and got up. I did not think I was much hurt. ... The main wound was a flap of flesh torn out of the inside of my left thigh and left hanging. It was fairly deep, and I could see all the muscles working underneath when I lifted it up to clean the wound."<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/stream/livinganimalsofw01cornrich#page/n7/mode/2up |year=1902 |title=The living animals of the world; a popular natural history with one thousand illustrations |volume=1: Mammals |author=Cornish, C. J.|author-link=Charles John Cornish |author2=Selous, F. C. |author3=Johnston, H. H. |author4=Maxwell, H. |publisher=Dodd, Mead and Company |location=New York}}</ref>}}

In 2016, according to a forest official, a female bear had killed three people, and hurt five others in [[Gujarat]] State's [[Banaskantha district]], near [[Balaram Ambaji Wildlife Sanctuary]], with some of the casualties being colleagues. At first, an attempt was made to trace and cage it, but this failed, costing the life of one official, and so a team of both officials and policemen shot the bear.<ref name="BalaramAmbaji2016B"/>

In Karnataka's [[Bellary district]], most of the attacks by sloth bears occurred outside forests, when they entered settlements and farmlands in search of food and water.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Samad |first1=A. K. S. |last2=Hosetti |first2=B. B. |year=2017 |title=Sloth Bear ''Melursus ursinus'' Human Conflict: A case study of unprotected bear habitat in Kudligi taluk, Ballari district, Karnataka |journal=International Journal of Zoology Studies |volume=2 |issue=6 |pages=255–260 |url=http://www.zoologyjournals.com/download/221/2-6-73-938.pdf |access-date=25 July 2019 |archive-date=18 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200718132433/http://www.zoologyjournals.com/download/221/2-6-73-938.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

In Mount Abu town in southern Rajasthan, sloth bears attacked people inside towns where they were seeking hotel waste in rubbish bins and encountered people by chance.<ref name=":0" /> Though such attacks were concomitant with increasing tourism activity, quite remarkably, local residents have not retaliated against the sloth bears. The absence of retaliation in many locations of India appears related to cultural norms and the dominant religion Hinduism where nature and animals are worshipped as deities.