A Night With A Sloth
What do you do when you receive a mysterious email inviting you have a cocktail with a sloth? You go of course! The California Academy of Sciences holds a NightLife event every Thursday from 6pm to 10pm. On March 16th, 2017 that event was dedicated to nocturnal animals and thanks to Classroom Safari and founder Bonnie Cromwell, a Two-Toed Linneaus Sloth named Willow was present.
Willow was rescued from a pet store in Florida after she was bred in captivity. Classroom Safari was able to rescue her from an unideal situation and provide her a new “forever home.” Now Willow is being properly cared for and enjoying her time with Bonnie and the other educators, when she is not busy helping out with educational outreach programs. Those programs and private events are geared toward conservation and animal information. Classroom Safari was founded by Bonnie 38 years ago, so her love of animals reaches both children and adults and assists in teaching about how important it is to conserve the lives of animals that most people never see.
Now back to sloths. Willow is currently around one year old and only weighs 6 lbs. She will eventually reach around 20 lbs when she is full grown. An interesting fact about Thursday night at NightLife was that it was “poop” night for Willow. Sloths only relieve themselves every 4 days and Thursday lined up as the lucky day. When sloths finally relieve themselves, they can lose one third of their body weight, resulting in a fairly large clean up. Leading up to bathroom time, sloths are very lethargic and once the business is done, they are ready to play all night.
Bonnie spoke about her discussions with researchers who studied sloths in the Costa Rican rainforest and told a story about a pretty sly male sloth. The male sloth was always in the same spot, on the same tree, every single day. So naturally, the researchers assumed the sloth didn’t move very much and stayed in the tree. One night they set up cameras to catch any night time activities between the sloths in the forest and got quite a surprise when reviewing the footage the following day. The male sloth had numerous hot dates that night. Researchers counted 11 dates, each with a different female sloth. At the end of his night, he returned to his favorite spot, on his favorite tree, proving not only is not there not enough research on these amazing creatures, but that they might not be so “sloth like.”
Resources:
https://www.classroomsafari.org/
https://www.calacademy.org/nightlife/nocturnal-nightlife