The Only Bear in South America Is Actually a Lost Brother of the Giant Panda, and It Loves Pineapple More Than Meat
South America is divided into eastern and western regions by the Andes Mountains, and has two completely different climate environments. The west of the Andes Mountains is very dry, and it is one of the driest places in the world - the Atacama Desert. The east of the Andes Mountains due to a large amount of rainfall, so South America's entire east side is lush, with vast rivers, dense rainforests, and even the world's largest rainforest - the Amazon rainforest, as well as the world's largest river - the Amazon River.
With dense rainforests, there are many kinds of animals, so South America lives many animals, including many unknown animal varieties. If you ask, what animals do we have in China that are enviable, that must be the national treasure giant panda.
But do you know that there are giant pandas who are missing relatives living in South America, which is South America's only bear species. Isn't the existence of giant pandas limited to China? Why do giant pandas have distant relatives living on the far side of the earth in South America?
Giant pandas are indeed a species unique to our country, and there are no wild giant pandas to be found in other countries. We all know that the giant panda's body has two colors, one is black, and the other is white, and there are also large black circles around their eyes.
The distant relatives of the bear also grow black circles around their eyes, just like wearing a pair of black sunglasses, so it is called the 'glasses bear'. Didn't 'glasses bear' just because it's the same as the giant panda has black eye circles be identified as a distant relative of the giant panda?
The 'glasses bear' is also called the 'Andean bear', they can only be considered medium-sized bears in the bear family, and they are the only extant species in the short-nosed bear family.
Short-nosed bears are not like black bears and brown bears, they have long mouths, which look very fierce, their mouths are not so long, round and cute, just like the giant panda we are familiar with.
The hair of the 'glasses bear' is usually quite uniform black, and there are a circle or thick or thin milky white stripes around their eyes, forming a ring, which looks cool when viewed from a distance, as if they are wearing cool sunglasses.
If you want to say something unique about the 'glasses bear', it is that it is the same as the giant panda, most of the time it eats vegetarian, and it really likes fruit food, especially pineapple, they really like it.
To harvest fruit, the 'glasses bear' climbs up trees or tall cacti, climbs to a height of more than 10 meters, and can flexibly climb from one tree to another tree. Although the 'glasses bear' likes to eat fruit, ripe fruit is not available in every season, so in other days, the 'glasses bear' will also eat cactus, honey, bamboo, etc.
Generally speaking, bears are carnivorous animals, while 'glasses bears' are a special case among bears, they actually eat vegetarian, this may be one of the reasons why they are distant relatives of the giant panda.
In fact, giant pandas and 'glasses bears' should be the same ancestor thousands of years ago, but with the passage of time and the evolution of species, their ancestors gradually formed different species, so it's not wrong to say that 'glasses bear' is a distant relative of the giant panda.
Nowadays in South America, the number of 'glasses bears' is very small, which has made them a rare and endangered species. The scarcity of their number is not only caused by the large number of human hunting, but also like many other endangered species, it is because their habitat is destroyed by which they rely for survival.
Our national treasure panda was previously also an endangered species, but after many years of effort, the giant panda is no longer so endangered, so as long as humans are willing to put in effort, we can save many endangered animals, let them continue to live happily on earth.
