Sloth bear ~

Bears by Richard Perry:

Consider the sloth bear who lives in a favorable habitat of dense jungle. His headquarters is a clump of bamboo or some rocky retreat of tumbled boulders, preferably with a cave where the temperature remains constant, and in which he can shelter from heavy rains, intense heat and flies. From dawn until shortly before sunset he passes the hours buzzing and humming while sucking his paws. Why do bears, and especially sloth bears and sun bears, suck theit paws? - possibly because much of their food is sticky or juicy or fishy, or because there is a sticky secretion between their pads. Possibly it is a psychological habit. That marvelous observer of bears, William H. Wright, hunter and prospector in the mid-western Rockies for thirty years at the turn of the century ( 1900 ), noted that in contrast to the industrious grizzly, who is forever searching and digging laboriously for food and methodically burying it for future use, the playboy black bear - the Happy Hooligan - who never caches food, always appears to be hard put to know how to fill in his time.