Luckily the party on the street was really just something that happened on the weekend, so we slept really well. We woke up around 7, got ready slowly and had breakfast at the bakery downstairs as people had raved about how good it is. I think they mean that they make some really nice sweets, because the breakfast we had was nice, but nothing to write home (or rave in a review) about.

 

None the less we were well fed when we headed over to the Jaguar Rescue Center. We signed up for the 9:30 tour and by about 10 we were on our way through the center with our guide, who happened to be one of the foremost authorities on Sloths, having moved here to study them and writing her PhD on Sloth behaviour. She had heaps of interesting stories to tell, and I learned a lot about sloths, only some of which I previously knew. Here are some key facts, because I know you all want to be more sloth-expertly.

But first, a super cute picture of 3 baby sloths:

  • There are two types of sloth, but they are less related than we are to Monkeys.
  • The sloth names are two and three FINGERED sloths, the misnoma of two and three TOED sloth is a mis-translation from the Spanish names.
  • Neither sloth is nocturnal, but their eyesight is extremely poor. This means that they don’t really care if they move at day or night
  • It’s normal for sloths to fall out of trees, usually because a branch doesn’t hold their weight. This isn’t usually a problem for them, they have 48 ribs and are designed to just bounce. It IS a problem if you are standing underneath them when they fall, one woman tried to catch one and broke BOTH her arms. The sloth was fine.
  • Sloth have a loop in their throat, allowing them to eat upside down. Downside: They can not vomit.
  • They eat dirt from the jungle floor regularly and draw some nutrients from this.
  • Sloth get extremely stressed by being touched.
  • Baby sloths are located by their mothers using sound, should they be dropped or get lost.
  • Sloth hair has unique fungus which grows in it, allowing them to camouflage even better. This fungus does not hurt them.
  • Sloth poop once a month, loosing about 1/3 of their bodyweight when they do. They come to the ground to do this and have an unexplained and odd dance-like ritual when pooping.
  • No one knows how old sloths get. The information available about this which says 20 years is a completely made-up statistic which was used in a National geographic article, and has been cited ever since. The foremost experts on sloth agree that they do not know, but many agree it may be up to 100 years. At least one sloth on record is 50 years old, and still looks like it has not aged. There are no physical characteristics which seem to indicate age.
  • Leading causes of sloth injury/death: Electrocution on the un-insolated components of Costa Rica’s power network. This is slowly being fixed, starting with the locations where most issues occur.
  • A sloth is not the laziest animal. The average sloth sleeps around 8 hours a day, though mentioned before, not at a specific time. The title of laziest mammal goes to the Howler Monkeys – also a native in Costa Rica – who sleep for up to 18 hours a day. They howl to avoid interacting with other monkey tribes as fighting takes energy, making them very docile. They are tired in part because they only eat leaves, which have little to no nutrients.

Okay, that last one wasn’t strictly a sloth fact.

Want to know how baby sloth sometimes get re-united? Listen into part of the tour 🙂

We enjoyed the tour, even though they can not show any wild cats (such as jaguars or Ocelots) because these animals can not have human interaction if they are to be released. They know this because they made this mistake with one, who is pretty much a homing pigeon now and will return even when released several hundred kilometres in the jungle… Though it killed a whole coop of chickens on the way as if to prove that it was a bad idea to abandon him in the jungle. We managed to get a few nice pictures of him. It’s an amazing cat, which can rotate its paws to climb up and down trees without a problem, and generally lives in the canopy of the rainforest.
This specific type of Ocelot (Margay) has the ability to mimic certain baby bird calls as part of their hunting techniques…. Clever girl!

 

After our visit we did some shopping for dinner and returned to our room before heading over to the beach. Against my suggestion, Manja wanted to walk to a further away beach, because the one directly across the road was a beach right at the city. I reluctantly agreed, and we were bickering about this a little bit when I suddenly jumped – there was a fur-ball at the base of a tree we were passing. That fur-ball turned out to be a sloth with a baby, eating the jungle floor. We very slowly and quietly approached. The sloth didn’t get disturbed, it didn’t even seem to realise we were there. Being certain that we didn’t disturb it, we carefully and quietly took some pictures.

 

After its snack, the sloth decided to head across the footpath and climb into the beachside canopy to relax. In the process of doing so it caught the attention of some other passing tourists, some of whom started to literally squeal with delight, grabbing their phones for photos and were about to run up to the poor thing. I calmly told them to be really quiet to not stress the poor animal, keep a safe distance and move slowly toward it. They complied, so I must have made my point with some authority. Good deed done for the day!

We headed over to the beach and jumped in for a bit. It was extremely choppy today, with some serious rifts. Even in the shallows of the beach you could feel the retreating waves pull at your feet, threatening to throw you over… It was kind of fun, even though it was a bit rough, probably because the water was warm!

 

Eventually we dried off in the sun before dropping by the local chocolate manufacturer to check out their wares. It wasn’t bad, but nothing appealed to us in the sense of being above average – though we may just have been spoiled by our visit to Charley’s chocolate factory in Queensland last year. Instead of buying a chocolate bar Manja decided to have a smoothie while I gave their Mocca (Chocolate and coffee mix) a go. It was okay, but again, not fantastic.

 

As we headed back, we walked past this little oasis where someone had placed a swing on a palm tree over the water. It gave us a very romantic setup for some photos.

 

We walked back to the room and relaxed for a bit, spending a bit of time making contact with friends and family. As the sun started to recede we made dinner… A LOT of dinner. It was super delicious and we were both stuffed after. A blog post later, we dropped into bed.