Tourists on a Costa Rican beach found a baby sloth. The youngster was lost, alone covered by sand and ants on the Central American beach. The tourists rescued the sloth and took it to the Jaguar Rescue Center where a veterinarian inspected it and found that, in spite of its traumatic adventure, the sloth was still in good shape.
Flickr The vet estimated that the little sloth, which weighed about the same as a can of soup, was approximately three weeks old, and most likely would not have survived the night had the tourists not rescued it from the beach. After confirming the sloth was healthy, rescuers at the Jaguar Rescue Center set out to reunite it with its mother. Here’s more from National Geographic: A visual search for the mother proved fruitless. Knowing that sloth moms recognize their babies’ cries, the center’s founder and resident biologist Encar Garcia recorded the orphan’s vocalizations on her smartphone, transferred the files to a portable speaker, and sent a team back into the wild the next day.
Pixabay Around 5 p.m., the volunteers noticed a curious adult sloth descending a tree. “The volunteers were very excited and said, ‘We got one that’s climbing down, and looking around like crazy,’" says Garcia, who wrapped the baby in a towel and raced to the scene with veterinarian Fernando Alegre. He lifted the animal up to the waiting sloth, which immediately accepted the baby. The two then shared a nuzzling embrace that brought the rescuers to tears, Garcia says. Though it’s known as the Jaguar Rescue Center, the good people there save and give aid to all sorts of animals. From their website:
Flickr The Jaguar Rescue Center is a temporary or permanent home for ill, injured and orphaned animals. With a focus on birds, reptiles, amphibians and small primates, the JRC provides veterinary services, round-the-clock care and comfort to animals that would otherwise be unable to survive in the rainforest or the sea of the Caribbean. And apparently, this wasn’t their first experience with baby sloths: Again from National Geographic: Garcia says that broadcasting sloth baby cries is a tried-and-true technique that has worked before. “One time I had the baby for eight days,” she says. “Eventually we were able to find the mother.” (Watch how sloths slowly navigate the world.)
Wikimedia Commons In 2017, her rescue center took in 150 orphaned or injured sloths; so far in 2018, there’s been at least a hundred. Raising a baby three-toed sloth is a special challenge, in part because the leaves they like to eat are difficult to get, she notes. But the benefits are worth it. Even after 17 years on the job, Garcia is still moved by the tender scene she witnessed on the beach that day. “For me,” she says, “it was like the first rescue all over again.”
