Events
It’s our favorite day of the year here at The Sloth Institute – International Sloth Day!
If you also feel like today is your favorite day, here are 5 ways you can celebrate sloths today (and every day):
1. Adopt a Sloth with The Sloth Institute
By symbolically adopting a sloth, you can contribute to saving sloth lives in the wild. Your donation will support rescue, rehabilitation, and research programs, as well as help preserve the forests for sloths and other wildlife. Join us on our mission of saving lives!
2. Say NO to sloth selfies
You may be thinking; “It’s just a photo, how bad can it be?” Taking photos with sloths is a horrible way to celebrate your love for them because the sloths that are provided for these activities are oftentimes taken from the wild for human entertainment. In addition, most encounter facilities take sloth babies from their mothers when they are still latched and nursing, in hopes that they will grow up more ‘used’ (desensitizing) to people so they can be manipulated more easily for these encounters. For these purposes, we recommend only seeing sloths in the wild or only at AZA-accredited facilities in the US or EAZA-accredited facilities in Europe. However, even if a facility is accredited, make sure to ask where their sloth originated from and don’t support places that purchase sloths instead of working with conservation breeding programs like the Species Survival Plan (SSP).
3. Only share responsible sloth photos and videos
Sloths are often misunderstood creatures. From their unique morphological characteristics to their hard-to-interpret behavioral characteristics, videos and photos of sloths in compromising situations can often be misunderstood as cute or anthropomorphized as human behavioral responses. When sloths raise their arm towards a human, it’s actually a threat response and their smile is permanent! In some viral videos, a crying sloth has been misinterpreted as a yawning sloth. Always remember that sloths aren’t humans and will almost never act like a human would in certain situations.
4. Read about sloths
Expand your knowledge about sloths by reading books like “Slothlove” and “Destiny Finds Her Way.” You can also find a wealth of information on sloths just by checking out The Sloth Institute’s website!
5. Plant a tree in honor of a sloth
Here in Costa Rica, we connect forest gaps by planting trees and installing “Sloth Speedways”, ropes that connect fragmented forest canopies. However, planting trees anywhere in the world can help sloths by helping to reverse climate change! Sloths are extremely dependent on their native environments and when the natural balance is off it threatens their ability to survive. Plant a tree today in honor of International Sloth Day!
