Despite some rare excursions into eastern Panama, spectacled bears are almost entirely in the Andes Mountains, and restricted to certain areas of northern and western South America.

Their range is in western Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, western Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina, an elongated geographical distribution of about 100 to 400 miles wide but a north-south length of about 3000 miles.

Prior to their range becoming as fragmented as it is now, this species had developed in a wide variety of habitats and altitudes throughout its range, including cloud forests, high-altitude grasslands, dry forests and scrub deserts.

Too, their diverse habitats were as great as the brown bear now occupy. Now, however, the primary habitat for spectacle bears are humid to very humid montane forests, called cloud forests and typically have an elevation of between 3,300 to 8,900 feet. However, this species has been seen below 1000 feet and as high as 16,000 feet in elevation.

Currently, the habit of this species is mostly influenced by the presence of humans.

Although its fur is blackish in color, but some bears may vary from jet black to dark brown and to even a reddish hue. The bear typically has distinctive beige or ginger-colored markings across its face and upper chest, however, not all spectacled bears have these spectacle markings. Even though these markings are slightly different on each individual bear, this species can be readily distinguished by these markings.

The spectacled bear is considered to be a mid-sized species of bear. The males are normally thirty percent larger than females in dimensions and sometimes twice their weight. Males can weigh from 200 to over 400 pounds, where as females normally weigh from 75 to almost 200 pounds. On an average, the males weigh 255 pounds and the females weigh 145 pounds and this rivals the polar bear for being the mos sexually dimorphic species of extant bear.

Head-and-body length can range from 50 to 80 inches, but mature males seldom are less than 60 inches.