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Bile bears, sometimes called battery bears, are bears kept in captivity to harvest their bile, a digestive fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. The bear species most commonly farmed for bile is the Asiatic black bear (''Ursus thibetanus''), although the sun bear (''Helarctos malayanus'') and the brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') are also used to collect bile. Both the Asiatic black bear and the sun bear are listed as Vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Animals published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.〔〔 Bears are farmed for bile in China, South Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar. ==History== China was the first country to use bile and its storage organ, the gall bladder, as ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Bear bile was first recorded in ''Tang Ban Cao'' (''Newly Revised Materia Medica'', Tang Dynasty, 659 A.D.). For thousands of years, the traditional way to acquire bear bile was to kill a wild bear and remove its gall bladder. The use of bear bile in medicines was adopted by Korea and Japan centuries ago as a part of TCM. In the 21st century, the use of TCM is widespread, not only in Asia, but also throughout Asian communities in other areas of the world. In the early 1980s, bile bear farms began appearing in North Korea, and then spread to other regions.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bile bear」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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