Each spectacled bear has a completely unique pattern around its eyes - no two bears look exactly the same. Researchers use photographs of these markings to recognise individual bears in the wild, just like a fingerprint. A bear's 'spectacles' can be almost white, yellowish or barely there at all.
Unlike most bears, spectacled bears are mostly vegetarian. They love bromeliads (pineapple-shaped plants that grow on trees), fruit and succulent plant stems. They are excellent climbers, pulling themselves up tall trees to reach fruit, and sometimes building rough platforms in the branches to sit and eat.
Spectacled bears are shy and very rarely seen in the wild. They are most active at dawn and dusk and spend much of the day resting in thick forest. Local people in the Andes have stories about bears appearing and disappearing in the cloud forest like ghosts.
The spectacled bear is related to an ancient bear called the short-faced bear that lived in the Americas millions of years ago. When the continents of North and South America joined together, the spectacled bear's ancestors walked south and eventually became the unique Andean bear we know today.