Tales from the jungle | July 2022
Hello, sloth community! Can you believe we’re more than halfway through the year already? We’ve already started preparations for International Sloth Day this October (Thursday, October 20th! Put it on your calendar!), but before that, here’s the latest news from the field:
Kukula Kids Club Photo Success!
Last month Girls Who Click hosted a photography workshop with our environmental club, the Kukula Kids’ Club. 12 kids got their own camera, some lessons in basic photography, and some conservation coaching for a fun week of nature and pictures. Quite appropriately, we even had a visit from a wild sloth, which was so perfect we couldn’t have planned it!
Sloth Crossings Update:
We’re only 16 bridges away from our next milestone: bridge number 200! We’re so excited we decided to celebrate early with this amazing video by Cederholm Photography. Check out that three-fingered sloth using one of our bridges!
Opossums, kinkajous, spider monkeys… and sloths, oh my!
So many animals use our Sloth Crossings bridges! We currently have a total of 16 camera traps monitoring bridges in order to test their efficiency.
If you would like to see more about the Sloth Crossings update, including more footage of wildlife using the bridges, here is our latest blog!
Detection dogs to count sloths
We are tremendously excited to begin our Scat Detection Dog Project this month! Since sloths are so hard to spot in the trees, we are going to teach a dog to find their poop instead, and use sloth toilets to tell us about sloth populations in specific areas. Nothing like this has ever been done before, but the results of the pioneering study will be extremely important.
Sloths have spent millions of years evolving to not be seen, so it’s very difficult to count them…until now. Thanks to the Future for Nature award received by Dr. Cliffe earlier this year, SloCo has been able to partner up with Working Dogs for Conservation to start training our newest team members: Dayko and Kesha!
There is still a long way to go with this ambitious project, but we are starting to make some progress. Learn more about how Dayko and Kesha will help us count sloths here.
Fails of the month:
Sick Days are never over (Part II): It’s either Dengue or Covid, and this month it was both. Half the team was out sick this July, and the office was frequently closed for quarantine, mosquitoes, or simply lack of staff. Get well soon, guys!
The Urban Sloth Project team was scattered to the four winds this month when senior members Amelia and Ames had to return to their home countries for a bit, leaving Haley, Dayber, and Fran to hold down the fort. Oh, and train up our newest sloth tracker, Jose. Hi Jose! Welcome to the jungle!
Haley from the Tracking Team hurt her ankle while sloth tracking at the end of July, just before we had to close HQ for Covid (again). This is what comes from wandering around the jungle while staring at treetops through binoculars－you can’t watch where you step! We are at least happy to report that she is recovering well.
In other lessons for watching where you step, new sloth tracker Jose was out looking for Croissant in Arse End Swamp and stepped on what he thought was solid ground near Poo Creek… and, well, was soon up to his knee in Poo Creek. Without a paddle, as they say. On the plus side, he did find Croissant. We appreciate your sacrifice, Jose!
-Sloth Team
