Happy April everyone! We hope you survived any April Fools pranks from the beginning of the month, had a happy Easter with friends and family if you so celebrate, appreciated some jazz (what, you didn’t know it was Jazz Appreciation Month?), and ate some yummy food on National Empanada Day, which was April 8th. Because the only thing better than an empanada is a holiday devoted to them!

Hello Sloth Crossings Community! In this update, we’ll be covering the highlights of the project from January through April. We’re proud to say that the project continues to expand to new levels and new areas!

Nacho, a feisty Hoffmann’s two-fingered Sloth, joined the Urban Sloth Project in May 2021. Nacho was one of the most interesting sloths we monitored during the months he was part of the project.

“Oh look, barbed wire,” Becky says as she picks her way around the rusty tangle in front of her. “It’s my favorite.” “Are you sure?” I ask. “We have a busted sewer pipe over here.” “That’s my special favorite,” Becky assures me.

Not to be confused with the giant panda, the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) is a small, furry mammal slightly larger than a house cat and completely unrelated to sloths. Red pandas are slightly more related to giant pandas than they are to sloths: the giant and red pandas parted ways just over 30 million years ago… about the time two- and three-fingered sloths diverged.

“Limón has its own identity,” said Markus Brown, whose family has lived in Punta Uva, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, for more than a century.

Responsible travel is not only caring about nature and the ecosystem, it is about being socially and culturally aware, understanding and respecting different cultures, customs, and traditions. It is about always trying to have a positive impact and minimize the negative impact as much as possible.

In the Amazon rainforests in the country of Colombia, there is a place called Serranía La Lindosa, with rock cliffs decorated in ancient drawings. There are thousands of paintings covering 12 kilometers (8 miles) of rock in an area that has been largely inaccessible.

We are very proud to announce that the Founder and Executive Director of SloCo, Dr. Rebecca Cliffe, is a proud recipient of the prestigious 2022 Future for Nature Award!

Forests are areas of land covered with trees. “Forest” is a very broad term that encompasses many different types of ecosystems, varying degrees of tree density, tree type, and land management. The first fern-like trees appeared on Earth about 380 million years ago, and today forests are the dominant land-based ecosystem on the planet, with 45% of all forests on Earth being found in the tropics.

The Future For Nature Foundation (FFN) supports promising young conservationists committed to protecting animals and plants in the wild. Each year the FFN Foundation chooses several candidates from a new generation of nature conservationists who are making a difference for the future of our natural world.

A parasite is an organism that lives in or on a host and benefits by deriving nutrients at said host’s expense. A parasite differs from a symbiote in that a symbiote offers some benefit to the host in exchange.

I stare at the spider hanging in front of my face. It is huge, blue and black and yellow, hanging from a golden web longer than my bicycle and better constructed than my house. It stares back at me.

March 8th is International Women’s Day, when the world takes a moment to step back and commemorate the achievements, and activism of women. 

February is the month for love. And here at SloCo, we have so many things that we love (besides sloths), including, but not limited to:

I’m standing amongst the wreckage of felled trees and bulldozed undergrowth, my boots crunching on dead vegetation, but I’m not looking down.

The humble sloth vs the armored pangolin, what have these two unusual mammals got in common? Pangolins are sometimes called “scaly anteaters”, because they A) have scales, and B) eat ants. If you remember our Sloth vs Anteater blog, you may be tempted to think the pangolins, like the furry anteaters, are distant cousins of the sloths, but in fact, they aren’t very related at all.

Supporters, how do I love thee? Oh, let me count the ways! I love your Urban Tracking Team, that finds me every day. I love you for your green-roped bridges that connect the canopy, I love you for your camera traps that take pictures of me!

Off the Caribbean breeze, there’s a sloth called Kokomo. He’s where we wanna go, to get away from it all.

Sloths are mysterious animals—people usually only see them sleeping or resting on their trees. It is rare for anyone to witness sloths in the act of mating, and thus there is little information about sloth reproduction.