Spectacled bears live in the cloud forests of the Andes - those misty, mossy forests where the mountainsides disappear into the clouds. They are very shy, very good at climbing, and spend a lot of time up in the trees. They sometimes build leafy platforms in the branches to sit on and eat.
Even though they are bears, they mostly eat plants. Their favourite foods are wild fruit and the soft inside of a plant called bromeliad - which looks a bit like a giant pineapple top. They occasionally eat small animals, but most days, a spectacled bear is more of a salad-eater than a hunter.
Every spectacled bear has different markings around its eyes - some have full circles, some have a little 'mask', some just have a stripe. Like a giraffe's pattern or a zebra's stripes, no two are identical. Scientists who study them can recognise individual bears by their face pattern.
The British author Michael Bond wrote 'A Bear Called Paddington' in 1958 after seeing toy bears in a London shop on Christmas Eve. He decided his bear should come from 'Darkest Peru' - and the real bears living in Peru's cloud forests are spectacled bears. Today, many people first hear of Peru because of Paddington.