Wait — we’re comparing a sloth with a reptile? It’s never been done before! What could a sloth possibly have in common with a reptile? On the face of it, there’s not much that a warm-blooded sloth could share with a cold-blooded reptile. But these slow and charismatic creatures might be more similar than you’d think.

We hope our newsletter finds you enjoying this lovely month of hearts, friendship, romance, and other springtime giddies. February has been an exciting month here at SloCo, and we are thrilled to be sharing the news and updates with you!

Researchers have discovered the remains of a specimen of Thalassocnus, a marine sloth found for the first time in a continental environment in Northern Argentina. This discovery significantly expands the geographic distribution of this lineage of fossil sloths.

At the end of last year, our tight-knit SloCo team scattered far and wide to celebrate the holidays with their families and friends. Some went to the other side of Costa Rica, some as far as countries such as Argentina, the UK, Germany, or the US.

I have been working as a researcher for SloCo for only 7 months. The time has passed extremely fast, and still, I have learned incredible things that can only be taught in the field, working with people face to face and always improving my skills, not only my knowledge as a scientist but improving my second language which is English (people say I can speak good but I know I can get better at it).

The Urban Sloth Project is a research aiming to study how habitat disturbance in urbanized areas of the South Caribbean of Costa Rica is affecting the behavior and ecology of wild sloths. The project is entering its 4th year, and surely, monitoring sloths is never a boring task.

For a chance to picture what the prehistoric Shasta ground sloth may have looked like, virtual and augmented reality may be our best bet. Ice Age giants such as mammoths, mastodons, giant beavers, saber-toothed cats, and dire wolves once roamed the American continent with giant ground sloths. But around 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age, America’s impressive megafauna went extinct.

For SloCo, December is a time for reflection and review; we write our annual reports, study what went wrong, celebrate what went right, and continuously look for what we can improve. Overall 2022 has been a great year for us: we’ve achieved (and exceeded!) so many goals that our motto for the year has become “Dreams Really Do Come True”!

Those of you who have been following SloCo’s work for the last few years know that our modus operandi is community-based projects: reforestation, urban mitigation, powerline insulation, wildlife bridges, responsible tourism campaigns, and more. However, our ultimate goal has always been to protect wildlife habitat before it needs restoring, and to that end, we are really excited to announce that SloCo is creating a 20-hectare reserve of primary forest in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica!

#GivingTuesday was created in 2012 and aims to be an antidote to consumer culture by celebrating generosity and inspiring people to bring about change in their communities and the world. It’s a chance to promote causes you believe in, and the one day of the year when non-profit organizations and charities get a chance to take center stage.

Every October 20th, millions of different people around the world come together to celebrate sloths for reasons nearly as varied as they are: because sloths are a flagship species critical to the biodiversity of their habitats, because they symbolize an antidote to the stress and hurry of our high-speed modern world, or because they are just really cute and interesting animals!

Last year we launched the first-ever International Sloth Festival. In spite of some rough beginnings and the remnants of Covid restrictions, we had a lot more people than we expected and the event itself was awesome!

“Ow! Ow, ow ow owwwwch!” I crouch down and hold my head in my hands, my skull still ringing with the impact. I feel as though I’ve been clonked with a falling coconut, or perhaps a rogue meteorite, though on some level I know that if this were the case I’d be far less conscious right now.

In the South Caribbean of Costa Rica, it is pretty common to find sloths in unusual places: on a restaurant cutlery shelf, a hotel ladder, a fruit stand, clinging to a truck… you name it, sloths have been there. World-renowned wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas came to the South Caribbean to take eye-opening photographs of the lives of these sloths in urbanized areas.

Hello, sloth community! This week we have some great news, and we just couldn’t wait until the end of the month to share it with you! What do the numbers 500, 5,000, 200, and 6,000 have in common? Read on and let us tell you.

The sloth and the capybara, do they have anything in common? What is a capybara, anyway? Aren’t they, like, exotic-looking giant rats?

We’ve got exciting news this August! We have of course been up to our usual projects: reforestation, education, sloth crossings bridges, and research–and in addition, we’ve got a new team member, a new sloth, and a few new articles for you!

The sea breeze is a welcome relief as we crest the final switchback and come out on top of the cliff. I take off my hat and let the wind run through my hair. It’s too hot to dry us out much, but the view from up here is my favorite in all of Puerto Viejo: the seething white and blue waves beneath us, the mist-shrouded distant horizon, and the sunlit local Cocles Island.

Dr. Cliffe’s research from 2018 determining the metabolic rate of three-fingered sloths was utilized by a team of researchers based in Brazil, working to conserve sloths in the Amazon and Atlantic Forests of Brazil. Dr. Cliffe’s data was modeled against climate change predictions, and data from different ecologists quantifying and predicting current and future land cover and land use in the Amazon and Atlantic Forests were also used.

The Kukula Kids’ Club, a new initiative for The Sloth Conservation Foundation, aims to enable and empower children with additional educational classes, gain new skills through workshops and provide them with fun activities they may not usually have access to due to geographical or financial barriers.