ConservationPublicationsSloth Diaries
Thanks to TSI Intern Kate Buchanan for sharing her amazing poop-sighting story. Enjoy!
Sloths are arboreal mammals, meaning they give birth to live young and spend most of their time in the forest canopy.
They are well adapted to this lifestyle, sloths do almost everything in their tree top homes from mating to finding food, giving birth and moving to different trees.
One of the few times they do go to the ground is, would you believe, to go to the bathroom which they do about once a week.
This fact I love to share with guest when running The Sloth Walk a sloth spotting tour for The Sloth Institute at Tulemar Gardens.
I particularly love the bathroom ritual of the three fingered sloth who digs a little hole with their tail to deposit their faeces in.
Of course, spotting a sloth doing its business is high on the list of behaviours you’d want to see! It is the crème de la crème of sloth spotting! The chance of seeing this however is miniscule with the process taking around 10 minutes and only occurring once a week.
So you can absolutely understand my excitement when I spotted a sloth doing its business on a sloth walk tour!! But It get’s better! Not just any sloth… but one of our study animals- Deanery’s Targaryen!
She was moving around low to the ground in a small tree- a good sign she is heading for the ground.
She was also looking bulky around the nether region- another good sign it’s that time of the week, as three fingered sloths can lose up 30% of their body weight when relieving themselves.
My tour guests and I held our breath, gave her some space and sure enough she climbed to the base of the tree. We watched her do a little shimmy (digging a hole) followed by a pause (poop time!) and then some more shimmy (bury poop) before climbing back up the tree.
Once she was happily up in the canopy, naturally, we fossicked around the base of tree to look for her little pellet poop. We found it! Bagged it. And I sent it off to the lab for analysis. (Here I am showing one poop pellet on a leaf.)
What a tour! What a day! The sloth spirits were smiling down on us that day as we had a member of Team Sloth marketing there to capture the moments on camera.
During my time at the Sloth Institute I have easily run over 200 Sloth Walks (with 3 sloth poops). Without a doubt each tour is different! How lucky I am to show people from around the world their first sloth and to witness their varied reactions! It is even more fantastic to do so in an ethical way while also educating guests on responsible sloth tourism (#saynotoslothselfies) with a bit of sloth biology and ecology thrown in. After all, knowledge is worthless if not shared!
Video: Dani making her way back up the canopy after accomplishing the weekly bathroom ritual.
i am hoping to take a leap of faith and permantly move to costa rica and help you with the beautiful sloths. I have always loved them. I have fostered english mastiffs for about 10 years and worked at a horse rescue, which is all the experience that I have. I am willing to do what it takes to help fix what the human race has done. I am a fast an willing learner. I love animals sooo mush. Sloths are very defenseless and need help and I hope everything works out over here in Indiana so my furbaby Grace can get over there and show our love to you furbabies. good luck to you and God Bless