Well, since these illustrations date from the 1700s to the 1800s, they technically represent ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘Victorian’ sloths, as those are the historical periods often associated with these centuries. But let’s not get too scientific for the sake of a good old-fashioned meme!

If you’ve been following our work for a while, you already know that finding sloths in the most unnatural places here in the South Caribbean is something we encounter almost every day. While it may seem delightful for tourists and appear ‘picturesque’ to see a sloth above a restaurant’s dinner table, it highlights the serious issue of urbanization encroaching on sloth habitats.

We do a lot of work to help wild sloths, and it’s great when we receive, for example, reports of them using our canopy bridges; but besides the photo or the video, we don’t know anything else about those sloths. So it’s very interesting when we have the opportunity to closely study and follow a particular sloth because we can learn so much from them. Today we want to share with you the story of a very special sloth named Angel.

Cliffe, R.N., Ewart, H.E., Scantlebury, D.M., Kennedy, S., Avey-Arroyo, J., Mindich, D. and Wilson, R.P., 2024. Sloth metabolism may make survival untenable under climate change scenarios. PeerJ, 12, p.e18168.

Slothtober is just around the corner, and we’re really excited to kick off our favorite month of the year! But September was indeed another busy month.

Although often referred to as two-toed sloths, this description can be a bit misleading since all sloths have three toes on their hind limbs. The real difference lies in their forelimbs, where sloths in the Choloepus genus have two fingers.

The definitive quiz and trivia for sloth experts! This time, we have the three-fingered sloth edition to celebrate the Bradypus genus. Don’t be fooled by the first question—it’s just an easy one to get you warmed up!

Trees, more trees. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, more?! The beginning of the Great Sloth Census (a different research project SloCo is conducting to study the population of sloths) is definitely not easy.

Contrary to the news reports, the virus in question, referred to as a “sloth virus,” is not exclusive to sloths.

August has been a really hectic month here in the South Caribbean, and as typical of the rainy season, we had several storms throughout the month that made us postpone or cancel our plans many times.

Hello, dear Sloth Community! The peak of summer and the rainy season has brought us big thunderstorms, flooding, and the high season for tourism in Costa Rica. Despite these challenges, we have continued with our usual work of planting trees and installing canopy bridges, spaying and neutering rescued dogs, and monitoring our sloths for the Urban Sloth Project.

On July 25, the founder and executive director of The Sloth Conservation Foundation, Dr. Rebecca Cliffe, was awarded the honorary title of ‘Doctor of Science’ by Swansea University in Wales, in recognition of her groundbreaking work in research and conservation.

Studying the GPS locations of an animal that doesn’t move much is challenging compared to studying species that travel a lot, such as whales and cheetahs. When studying sloths, accuracy is what we need to focus on.

This short documentary, filmed and edited by Mira Meijer, follows Dr. Cliffe and The Sloth Conservation Foundation team on the journey to a healthy sloth population and peaceful coexistence with humans in the growing town of Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica.

The Osa Peninsula, located in the South Pacific area of Costa Rica, is one of the most biodiverse hotspots on the planet, containing 2.5% of global terrestrial biodiversity in just 1,200 km²! On social media, you can see footage of tour guides constantly spotting tapirs, monkeys, and even jaguars.

Sloths are divided into two large groups: Bradypus, the three-fingered sloths that include the famous smiley and masked-face sloths, and Choloepus, the brownish ones with a pig-like nose and two fingers on each hand.

Sloths are slow and time is fast, and as we said goodbye to the sixth month of the year, we have amazing updates! This month, we welcomed a new SloCo team member: Deily Mora Aguilar, who will be our new Connected Gardens and Sloth Crossings manager.

Social media is filled with photos and videos of people holding sloths (or other wildlife), and we are investigating the reasons behind this behavior, as well as public perceptions and experiences regarding encounters with sloths.

In our last update, we shared with you the amazing milestone of our bridge n°300. In case you missed it, you can read all the details in this blog! We’ve started studying the usage of the Sloth Crossings, so that other colleagues and organizations can see the effectiveness of these types of bridges and replicate this project in other parts of the world.

Tortuguero is a small village with no streets or cars, nestled between the ocean and a river. It’s known for its sea turtle nesting season, as well as its mangroves, rivers, and canals.