Sloth mania!

 

Today Leka and Kaisa did a half-day trip to the nearby Sloth Sanctuary, a refuge for orphaned and/or injured sloths where visitors can also go on a canoe tour in shallow channels criscrossing the rainforest. Lina decided to stay at the hostel, as she's grown quite attached to the seaside hammocks.

Actually it should be mentioned that we were originally supposed to go snorkeling today, but the sea was so high that we were adviced to switch it to tomorrow morning. Kaisa had been pining for the sloths ever since we saw their information center on the way here, and now it seemed that the forces of nature had decided that she should be allowed to go see them.

At the sanctuary we learned that it's totally old-fashioned to talk about three-toed or two-toed sloths, as all of them actually have three toes on their hind legs. It's the front legs that are different, so three-fingered and two-fingered are the correct terms. The two species are slightly different in size, build and temperament.

The sanctuary receives sloths from people who have found them in the nature, and attempts to nurse them back to health and release them into the forest. However, sloths that have been orphaned at an early age can't make it in the wild, as they lack the instruction their mother would've given them during the year they would've clung to the mother's belly. This includes which plants are safe to eat and which not. So some of the sloths become permanent residents and the sanctuary, and we got to meet a few of them.

The most famous sloth of them all is Buttercup, a 20-year old three-fingered sloth who kind of started the whole thing when she was brought to the owners as a baby. Buttercup was hanging out in the cafeteria, and unlike many of the others adult sloths seemed to enjoy our attention and happily pose for the camera.

We also got to visit the nursery where baby sloths are bottle-fed with goat milk and later on munch on boiled, peeled and chopped vegetables. But Kaisa's favorite still was Toyota, a male who had been found critically injured when climbing on a powerline, with serious burns on all his limbs. He had been lying wounded on the ground for weeks so his left arm was gangrenous and had to be amputated, but miraculously he recovered and is now living happily at the sanctuary.

These curious animals somehow seem very helpless but simultaniously very enduring, being able to heal themselves even when seriously injured and survive for millenia in forests filled with predators despite their slowliness. Their biggest enemy today are – surprise, surprise – humans, with roads built in their paths, deforestation destroying their habitat and pesticides poisoning their food. But at least some people are trying to do some of the damage.