In the gift shop at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary near Cahuita, Costa Rica, an educational DVD cover reads “Sloths: Hardly a Deadly Sin!” It’s true, there is nothing sinful in the unhurried lifestyle of these jungle beasties, but they certainly bring out the vices in me. Envy for those sloth handlers who get to hold the sloths at the rescue. Lust to stroke the fur of the baby two-toed. Greed, in that I want ALL THE SLOTHS! And now you can add Pride to that list; Pride that I met the sloths whereas you, most likely, have not. Gluttony? I confess, one of my earliest questions about sloths is why they didn’t become a staple of the tropical dinner table. Apparently they just taste nasty. And as for Wrath, can there be any greater antidote for that vice than this precious mug?
I don’t remember exactly when I became obsessed with sloths, but I can assure you it was long before the advent of youtube. It probably began with my childhood fascination with Ice Age megafauna. For some reason, these not-to-distant ancestors of todays horses, cougars and armadillos seemed infinitely more bizarre to me than dinosaurs. (Apparently I’m not alone in feeling this way, as right now, the Academy of Science in San Francisco is holding an exhibit called “Extreme Mammals” that is largely devoted to just that question of why we silly humans get so caught up on crazy horns and teeth and overly extended limbs.) Megatherium, the largest of the ground sloths, and the tank-like Glyptodon were particular favorites.
Maybe I’d researched it, or maybe it was just taxonomic intuition, but as I formed my internal grouping of animals into “favorites” and “everything else,” a pattern emerged. On the “favorites” side, every species of the order Xenarthra. This grouping of animals includes all types of Sloth, armadillo and anteater. Let’s call them the Silly Snooters. Even though they’re technically found on separate branches of the evolutionary tree, Aardvarks and Pangolins also make the cut.
During my first trip to Costa Rica, two years ago, goal #1: see some sloths! This was before sloths went viral and I had no idea that we were staying just a couple of miles from the Sloth Sanctuary, so it was wild sloths or nothing. My wife (then girlfriend) kept claiming to spot them, but wherever she pointed, all I saw was a distant dark lump that could just as easily be a wasp’s nest or a leaf. As far as I was concerned, if you can’t see a face, it doesn’t count. Finally, we did see one very young sloth clinging to a tree in Cahuita National Park, but the way it was perched there at eye level right near the trail, completely unmoving, there was something suspicious about it. I’d seen better wildlife on the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland. The monkeys (howlers and Capuchins) brought their A-game, but the sloths… frankly, they were just being lazy.
So when we left for Panama and Costa Rica last month, I tried to keep my sloth expectations (my slothspectations, if you will) in check. Of course we’d see some sloths — the Sloth Sanctuary was on our itenerary! — but I was still holding out for a sloth spotting moment that would rekindle my childlike fascination with the furry doofuses. Boy, did this trip deliver the goods! Everywhere I looked, there was a sloth dangling from a branch. We saw young sloths and old sloths, sleeping sloths and feeding sloths. We caught an extremely rare scene of a sloth climbing down from a tree with surprising grace and speed. While zip-lining through the canopy, we looked down from one treetop platform to see a sloth happily grazing on the branches below.
And then we visited the Sloth Sanctuary. Founded some 18 years ago after local children brought an injured sloth to a family-run eco lodge, the Sloth Sanctuary now houses dozens of injured and orphaned sloths and is a center of sloth research and education. The center’s goal is to one day rehabilitate as many sloths as possible back into the wild, but they are still trying to figure out how to give human-reared orphans the skills they need to survive on their own. The star of the sanctuary is Buttercup, the sloth who started it all. She spends most of her days lounging in a hanging wicker chair and grinning at her adoring fans. When she reached her three-fingered arm towards her longtime guardian, it felt like seeing ET and Eliot touch fingers in the flesh, right before my eyes.
My slothspectations were been blown away. Perezoso — you’re number one in my book. As for you, Silky Anteater, why you gotta be a stranger?
Top Ten Extreme Sloth Facts!
- Sloths don’t drink! They get all of their water from the leaves they eat.
- Sloths have enormous stomaches, with up to 2/3rds of their body weight attributable to stomach contents.
- Sloths only poop once a week. For reasons not fully understood, they always climb to the ground to do their business.
- Three-toed sloths have two extra vertebrae in their neck which allows them to turn their neck 270 degrees.
- Sloths can survive falls of up to 90 feet!
- Thanks to their extremely slow metabolism, Sloths are second only to Wolverine in their super-healing powers.
- Sloth genetalia are hidden inside a pouch tucked way up inside the body so that it’s impossible to tell a sloth’s sex at birth.
- Sloth moms usually give birth to a single baby. When there are twins, one of them is abandoned as the mom can’t survive with two babies clinging to her.
- There’s a species of “Sloth Moth” that lives its life in the sloth’s fur and lays its eggs in the sloth’s poop.
- The earliest ground sloth fossils date back 35 million years.
Thank you so much Alyssa, Amanda, Asia, Kayla, Nicholas, and everyone for coming by. I’m also still giddy that Brian Froud came by the booth and I was got to shake his hand and talk about Labyrinth a bit. I gave him a Toby amulet to give to Toby, as well as a Moppet one to give to Wendy. Such a nice guy and a phenomenal artist.
