The three of us rushed to the area where the baby was found. Armed with only a photo of the little body laying inches from the highway next to a local bus stop, we finally found the right spot and the exact tree above where the baby had fallen. A quick look up into the forest canopy and Pedro spotted a sloth! The sloth was on the move but immediately after spotting it, we noticed it was a male (male three-fingered sloths have patches of unique fur on their backs called a speculum).
Disappointed, we kept searching and not long after spotted a female three-fingered sloth. Knowing there was a good chance she was mom, we put the baby on a small sapling so that he would cry and that would attract mom down to him. As soon as baby was on the tree, he started crying and immediately mom responded by climbing down towards the cries. We were all SO excited! Mom was coming down!!! This was going to work. We settled a few meters away very quietly, so as not to disturb the reunion but had our cameras ready to record the action. As mom came down we noticed she seemed kind of confused. Instead of going exactly to where the baby was crying she started to come down a vine in the other direction. Not wanting to miss this opportunity as she could quickly head back up the vine, I grabbed the baby and put him directly onto mom. As I handed him to her she reached out and grabbed him towards her chest. They embraced and all seemed well for a few seconds until baby started to fall off of mom again, hanging on by only one foot and crying. As he cried mom pulled his arms and legs out and started looking at him as if to say, “why are you crying?!?” which only made him cry more. They did this back and forth upside wrestle for a few minutes while we watched, shocked and not really knowing what we were witnessing. We’d never seen a reunion be so complicated…usually they are pretty straight forward. Mom takes baby and then climbs up the tree as fast as possible. We started to wonder if something was wrong…As we looked around at each other wondering if we should intervene or just keep watching, mom started to head further down to the ground (RIGHT next to us) with baby dangling upside down off of her back by one foot. She proceeded to go to the bathroom on the ground. As she started to head back up we decided to grab mom and make sure she has milk. Maybe she wasn’t this baby’s mother after all?!? Before they could get too much higher up, we grabbed mom and checked her nipples for milk production. Both mammary glands were producing milk. She had to be the mom! We placed baby directly onto mom’s chest and put his head near her nipple then let them go. After she climbed about 1 meter directly above our heads, baby started to dangling off of her body…crying, yet again and mom started looking at him like he was crazy, yet again. As they hung there upside down, we all discussed what we should do…something was off with both of these sloths. None of their behaviors were normal. But before we reached a conclusion, the little baby fell from mom, bounced off of my head and landed on the ground. Not slowed down at all, baby continued to cry and immediately mom rushed to the ground to get her baby. At this moment we decided to grab both mom and baby and take them back to our lab for further diagnosis.
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