Orphaned Sloth

Posted by Sheri Amsel Jan 5, 2007

My brother, a zoo veterinarian, was traveling in Brazil and stopped in to visit a veterinary hospital outside of Belem. There he discovered a six-month-old three-toed sloth sitting despondently in a small cage. The sloth had been brought in by a local man who had accidentally shot its mother, thinking that she was a monkey. The locals eat monkeys but apparently find sloths unpalatable. He brought the little orphan to the veterinary hospital and dropped it off.

The young sloth could, in theory, live independently from its mother by six months, though in the wild would still be clinging to her much of the time. It was weaned and could eat leaves, but alone in the hospital was refusing them. Slowly it was wasting away in its little enclosure.

My brother, speaking in really lousy Portuguese, tried to talk to the workers at the hospital about the sloth. He suggested that they carry the baby sloth around the way its mother had. He had a theory that the baby was in shock from losing its mother so abruptly and that’s why it was not eating. Sloths also have a low body temperature and metabolic rate so need to be kept very warm to be comfortable. It would not survive long unless they could get it to eat.

Finally, a worker agreed to hold the sloth and it immediately curled its arms and legs around her. Her body heat and perhaps the comfort of her presence eventually made the sloth more comfortable. Within a few hours it was eating small amounts of cecropia leaves. The staff at the hospital took turns carrying the baby around. This seemed to restore the young sloth’s appetite. Once they got it past this critical phase, they were hopeful that soon it could be released into the forest and make it on its own in the wild.

To read more about sloths: http://mammals.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_sloth