We spent one weekend in late January visiting the Puerto Viejo area. Our main mission was to tour the sloth orphanage, or sloth sanctuary. We learned so much and had a lot of physical contact with them.
Some cool things we learned: There are two species of sloth here in Costa Rica. They can live over 40 years in captivity. They can eat from several types of trees, but only certain ones. They have scary, crazy, pointed conical teeth to crack hard fruits (the two toed sloth). The three toed sloth screams to attract a mate (this happened about 10 feet away from us and made our hair stand on end!). Both species poop once a week and climb to the bottom of the tree to do this.
The sanctuary has about 100 sloths there, but we were only able to interact personally with about 20 of them. The other sloths are being nursed back to health so they can be reintroduced into the wild, therefore, they cannot interact with people.
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| We got to pet about 10 adult sloths like this one. See Bec and Mike and the background? |
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| Best moment of the weekend! This baby sloth kept reaching for Bec. It finally got a hold of her hat and pulled it down on her face. Yes, this baby sloth is wearing a baby onsie. It gets cold without a mom around to snuggle. |
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| Each baby sloth has a stuffed animal that they get to choose as his/her snuggle buddy. They always choose the same one and are very attached to them! |
1 comment:
Finding a new entry on your blog today was like getting a greeting card in the mail. I love feeling close to you all and the great experiences you are having in Costa Rica! It helps that you post such wonderful photos! Tallie
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