Sloths, my true spirit animal?
- Em
- Apr 17, 2016
- 2 min read
I often find myself feeling sloth-ish, especially after a long day of classes and homework or studying in library.
This is a picture I took from a bus on the side of a busy road in Costa Rica. It was my first or second day there and I remember being so blown away. Like what?! Costa Rica has sloths on the side on the friggin roads? How cool!?
Well as it turns out, there were tons of sloth everywhere, like seriously once I figured out what to look for in tree canopies I saw like 10-15 of them in one hike.
This is a mother Three-Toed Sloth taking a little cat nap in a tree with her young baby snuggled in with her. On the next tree (not pictured) was another juvenile Three-Toed Sloth that our guide suggested was one of her older babies from previous years that hadn't gone far from its momma. I can relate to that little sloth sticking by his mom in the nearby tree, never really wanting to move away because laundry, groceries, and adult responsibilities and stuff, right?
While paying rent and doing its own laundry aren't likely big worries for that little sloth, but leaving home would still be a pretty big risk for him. Sloths are slow animals (no duh) and because of that they are very vulnerable to a number of threats.
The major threats that sloth currently face are
Habitat loss - Sloths depend on rainforests for food and shelter, and unfortunately rainforests are disappearing worldwide.
Predators - while they are usually safe high up in trees, Sloths have a peculiar habit where they come down from their tree once a week to, uhm, well, to relieve themselves... And as you can imagine they are quiet vulnerable once they are on the ground doing their business to any hungry predator.
Roadways - Sloths do have to leave the comfort of their trees to find food or mates (that's right, even sloths have to get out of bed and take their sweatpants off to find a mate - you are not alone). Again I'm sure you can imagine how dangerous it is for slow sloths to be crawling around on the ground especially if they have to cross a road! Vehicles are a major source of mortality for even fast animals.
There are a lot of interesting things about sloths that I would love to share with you, but this is it for now.
Sloths are great, I think everyone loves sloths, especially because they've gone sort of viral around the internet lately. I hope you found this fascinating.. HAH.
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