The Urban Sloth Project Recap – Part II | 2022
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.
We already made a recap for the first 13 months of the USP, covering from November 2020 to December 2021. We recommend you to give it a look at Part I before reading this one!
January: Falling trees, falling sick, and falling in love with Celeste
The USP got off to a rocky start in January of 2022, beginning with sloth tracker Sarah almost getting squished by a falling tree while out tracking Baguette through Heck Swamp. This was back when Baguette was largely unfindable, and we weren’t sure if it was the equipment or the sloth. Later that month we got a new radio receiver, which at least answered that question (Baguette was just a master of disguise), and we were able to track our other Urban Sloths much more effectively!
Covid swept through the Tracking Team in January, laying low our heroic sloth spotters for a few weeks, and unfortunately, they weren’t the only thing that felled: some major deforestation in Luna’s territory the previous December has us really worried, but we and some other conservation organizations came together to fence off the area again, and hopefully prevent it from being used as a parking lot. This will help trees get established, and make it safer for the animals when they have to come down.
For all of the difficulties though, there are always bright spots, and the sickness and danger seemed worth every moment when we spotted Luna with her new baby Celeste! Celeste was only a few days old when Sarah found the duo crawling across the wreckage of trees in their territory, but they eventually made it up to the safety of the canopy to launch 2022 in style.
February: Luiza, the new neighbor for Luna and Celeste
We added Luiza, a three-fingered female sloth, to the USP in February after spotting her on the ground in exactly the same area where we had first found Luna and Sol. Both sloths live at opposite ends of the same stretch of forest.
Luiza lives next to (and sometimes on) the beautiful Cocles Bluff, Bouncer Of All Radio Signals, which is an oasis of nature just outside of the busy town. You can almost forget you’re a stone’s-throw away from a busy main road.
February also saw Croissant disappear deep into Arse End Swamp, and Mango get over her fear of heights and climb up into the canopy like a proper sloth.
March: Loving tropical fruits and Nachos
Mango has always been a favorite of the USP, partially due to her proximity to SloCo headquarters, so when we got an opportunity to add another nearby sloth we were so excited! Maracuya, a three-fingered sloth, joined the USP in March when the Tracking Team were out looking for Mango. At the base of one of Mango’s favorite trees was a little sloth, nearly identical to Mango, laying under a tangle of vines that had become detached from the trunk. Maracuya and Mango quickly got dubbed the Fruit Twins and were tracked back to back for the duration of Maracuya’s time in the project.
Nacho, the adventurous two-fingered sloth who was always spotted in bars and restaurants in town, was one of the most interesting sloths we monitored during the months he was part of the project, but after a backpack and a collar were stolen, we decided to remove him from the project.
April: Baguettes, backpacks, and babies
The highlight of April was the epic Hunt for Baguette, in which the entire SloCo team spent days wading through the stink and dangers of Heck Swamp to find our most mysterious sloth and get her backpack off once and for all.
With the addition of Dayber and Fran, who are usually busy planting trees and connecting canopies, Baguette was finally found, caught, uncollared, and discovered to have given birth to a baby while hiding from us! We were the proudest not-really-godparents ever, and managed to relieve Baguette of her backpack.
The Tracking Team took some volunteers into Mango’s territory in April for a bit of a treat and some sloth education, and besides Mango, they discovered a very angry beehive. Amelia took some stings for the team and most of the volunteers got away without further incident.
May: Tech upgrades for the twins
May saw a change of tech for Mango, upgrading from a collar to a backpack. We felt, when we first found her, that Mango was a little too small for a Daily Diary Logger (otherwise known as a Sloth Backpack) and telemetry tag, but now she’s all decked-out in tech.
Our incredible sloth backpacks have taught us so much about sloth ecology that we barely guessed at before, and quite a few things that we never would have guessed in a million years!
Mango was very cooperative for her backpacking, and her neighbor Maracuya crossed over to the other side of the road to explore some new territory there. Thankfully for our tracker–and for Maracuya–she quickly returned to the original side of the road, as her new spot featured a guard dog who took his job very seriously. If we’d had a backpack on Maracuya, we might have known exactly how she accomplished this, but alas we only have so many backpacks, and they must be deployed sparingly.
June: Close encounters with snakes and sloths
We got our wish for more sloths in backpacks in June, when we changed out Mango’s backpack AND got one on Maracuya after all!
Two months of back-to-back backpacks on Mango was very exciting, and we were thrilled to learn what Maracuya was up to when we weren’t watching.
Luna had some batteries in her collar running low, but cooperated very nicely with us to get her collar changed, and Luiza made a rarely observed descent to the ground. Amelia got a close encounter with a harmless vine snake while watching this, which nonetheless gave her a good reminder as to why we wear snake guards while tracking.
July: Welcome, José and Deborah!
The most exciting thing to happen in July wasn’t for once a new sloth, but a new Urban Sloth Project lead! José joined the team in July and has been really showing his colors as he takes the USP to new heights. During his first month on the job he managed to spot the extremely elusive Croissant, thereby seriously impressing the rest of the Tracking Team, who had not had visual confirmation of her in a while.
Besides a new sloth tracker, we also got a new sloth in July: Deborah. Like Mango and Maracuya, she is a young sloth that lives near HQ and makes tracking her a dream. Two-fingered sloths are generally more aggressive than their three-fingered counterparts, so Deborah was (unsurprisingly) uncooperative throughout the collaring process.
Deborah came out of anesthesia more quickly than anticipated and did her best to bite the researchers trying to take her measurements. Happily, she did not succeed in this and was quickly released back into her trees. Alan showed up for a brief cameo after a long absence but did not come down for us to retrieve his collar.
August: More tech theft
August was a frustrating month for the USP. Someone removed Maracuya’s collar, necessitating Team Sloth to borrow a metal detector to find it among the weeds bordering the beach near Mango’s territory. We believe that Maracuya was unharmed during this theft, but with no way to track her, we just have to take it on faith that our little fruit sloth came away from her encounter all right!
Luiza got a change of tech in August, which was at least much easier to accomplish than finding Maracuya’s missing collar, as Luiza came low just as the signal from her collar started indicating that it needed a new battery. After a frustrating month, we were very thankful to Luiza for making one task a little easier.
September: Sloth moms
Luiza surprised everyone with a new baby in September, first spotted in photographs taken while tracking, and later confirmed in live sightings! Sloth babies are tiny and hide easily from our eyes up in the canopy, nestled into their mom’s tummy.
At the end of the month, we also added a two-fingered mom and baby duo who we appropriately named Pumpkin and Pie. Despite Pumpkin being the largest two-fingered sloth in the project by a large margin, collaring her was a breeze. The addition of two two-fingered sloths was welcome, as most of our Urban Sloths are three-fingered.
At this point, four of five of our two-fingered Urban sloths had to be removed from the project for a variety of reasons. Additionally, three-fingered sloths are far easier to collar as they do not need to be anesthetized and the risk of blood-shed is far less, all of which skews the ratio of collared sloths to three-fingereds. September also kept the team busy with a new backpack for Deborah, and more data gathered from Mango.
Slothtober!
October got off to a rocky start with the electrocution of a two-fingered sloth in Pumpkin’s territory–initially, we feared it was her, but we can at least report that Pumpkin is fine. We keep a database of all electrocuted animals to report all incidents to the electrical company, ICE.
The rest of the month was super busy with the preparation and execution of the Second International Sloth Festival and International Sloth Day on October 20th, and the crazy amount of effort that went into pulling off such a major event! It was all worth it though to see how many people turned out in support of our favorite animals, and how much we got to celebrate, learn, and teach.
Jose took many people for a quick jaunt over to Luna and Luiza’s territory to show them firsthand how sloth tracking is done. Luna acted as the ambassador to the event, hanging out in some very visible trees and giving some satisfying visuals to all our would-be sloth trackers!
November: The good news and the bad news
If October was busy, November was empty… of sloths, that is. Not all sloths, of course, but Arthur played hard to get, and some extensive tree trimming in Mango’s favorite uva cluster drove her deeper into her territory, though we are happy to say she has since been reclaiming what is left of her tree.
Little Pie heartbreakingly disappeared from Pumpkin, and Deborah nearly went blind from the dust of the road getting into her eyes. She ended up needing emergency treatment to save her sight, which SloCo was able to help her with.
In better news, Luiza’s baby was happy and active for the month of November, often seen reaching out and taking an interest in the world around her mom. In November we also added Zeus, a two-fingered sloth!
December: Improvements
December saw José saving some sloths from the road while off duty…though of course, you’re never really off duty when you’re on Team Sloth.
Luiza’s baby continues to thrive, Luna has been moving around her territory a lot, and sometimes she overlaps with her neighbor Luiza. They were once even spotted in the same tree together, though, since sloths are solitary, this probably had more to do with the tree leaves being very tasty this season.
Arthur is still high in the trees and we’re just waiting for him to be reachable so as to remove his collar. We want it back, Arthur!
In better news, Deborah has moved to higher branches in her trees, which is great news as it will likely protect her eyes from further dust attacks.
Finally, we have ordered more data loggers (backpacks), and hope to deploy them for a fresh start in 2023!
2022, what a year!
In conclusion, did we think the Urban Sloth Project would be this eventful? Not really! That’s the difficulty and the wonder of doing something completely new–the things you learn along the way. 2022 was a really eventful and successful year for the Urban Sloth project, and we can’t wait to see how all of our big plans for 2023 turn out!
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