Photo update 7: Playtime!

We’ve got a little treat for you in this latest photo update!

This time, one of our camera traps was fortunate enough to catch several shots of two sun bears – mum and child – playing together! We asked Wong Siew Te – sun bear expert extraordinaire of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, and he said that it’s quite a rare behaviour to sight!

We’ve stitched all the shots together to form a sort of slow-motion video. Enjoy!

Wong thinks that the cub is probably a female too. He’s offered us a few more insights into this kind of bear behaviour:

1) The bear on the back doing the mounting looks older – loss of hair, longer and more curved claws, and is a female who has given birth in the past (has a suckling mark on her breast).

2) The blacker bear is a female too – good looking, younger looking with dense black hairs

3) In the wild, unrelated bears don’t normally get along well. This kind of behavior at first glance should be mating/foreplay behavior but these two bears are females.

4) Another possibility is that they’re siblings who know each other well. But in the bear world siblings  rarely have the opportunity to meet one another. If they do they’ll treat each other as strangers.

Thanks so much Wong!!! Apart from the links given above, more on Wong’s exploits with sun bears can also be found here, and here, and more sun bear videos to whet your appetite here. Please help support his efforts!