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January update

So January began with my carmine red dye finally arriving and my project finally beginning! My first attempt at getting the dye into them involved me not feeding them for 12 hours (so they were super hungry) then smearing it over hibiscus flowers and trying to get them to eat it. This failed miserably since they clearly could smell it and thought it was a bit unusual. I then tried to spread it across Cecropia leaves which also failed, but less so. Brenda ate a few but that's about it. Then to my surprise Jewel developed a taste for the dye-covered flowers and ate a good amount. I decided that this was a pretty bad method so with Judy's help, I let them eat their lunch then syringe fed the dye as a liquid. Turns out they quite liked the taste and drank plenty enough to do the job. I have been collecting and mashing the poo ever since - waiting for it to turn red! But I have no idea what to expect so it's fairly nerve racking. It has been 2 weeks since they were given the carmine red, and as of yet, the poo is still a lovely brown / green colour. Who knows what is going to happen ... ! Oh and also, Brenda has developed a worrying habit of shoving her head through the roof of her enclosure and getting it stuck there. At which point she just flails around uselessly kylestyle and waits for me to come and save the day. I hope she quits this game soon.

Felice settling into her new enclosure:

Jewel and the signs I have now put up:

About 2 weeks ago, we received a tiny new born baby brought to us by a police officer. Its mother had been giving birth in a park in Limon when some children began to stone her. She was so traumatised by everything going on that the baby fell straight from her, ripping the umbilical cord as he went. The police collected him from the bottom of the tree and brought him here, but sadly didn't prosecute the children, or save the mother. Judy and Marcelo stitched up the tiny babies' stomach as I held it's little hands, but sadly he died overnight, probably from injuries sustained through the fall.

More sad baby news - Over the last 2 weeks we have also lost Athena, Puca and Jacque Noel (the new baby born in December). I miss them LOTS, they were all super sweet, kylestyle. Me and Marcelo did the Necropsy's for all those who died recently as well as Topo Gigio. All the babies seemed to have aspirated milk and Topo has fluid in his lungs. It's still a bit of a mystery what happened, but I'm sure the recent 'cold' spell didn't help. Jacque Noel always had the Apnea problem where he would stop breathing after every feed, but we always hoped he would grow out of it - sadly not. But in true sloth style, with every loss we seem to be brought a new baby.

We recieved a new one a couple of days ago, now named Yodo. He was rescued after his tree was chopped down killing his mum. A family held on to him for a couple of days and unfortunately gave him cows milk, so as of yet, we dont know if he is going to make it. Today, we found a whole bunch of ticks on him and I had the job of pulling them all off with tweezers - all 70 of them !!! Looks like they had babies. Here are a couple of pictures:

Claire starting the de-ticking process:

Laurel is the baby I mentioned in the last post that would eat nothing but hibiscus - she is doing well and has finally started accepting almond leaves. However after weighing her we think she is probably only around 6 or 7 months old - far too young to know how to survive on her own. But she is super happy and eating well ! Timothy is another slightly older baby brought to us from Cahuita. He too was found on the ground, cold and very hungry! After eating A LOT he collapsed and had probably his best sleep for a long time! We have handled him as little as possible since to try and help him settle in, but today we inspected him and found a huge dog bite across his stomach. No wonder he was so scared. It looks ok though and will be stitched up as soon as possible.

Finally, Lola was brought to us by a woman not far away. She had found her alone, but had then kept her and tried to raise her for about 4 weeks. During this time she phoned Judy for advice and was convinced to bring the baby in for proper care. When she got here she was starving to death and dehydrated. She settled in after a few days and loved her goats milk and carrots- she was putting on weight nicely. Then today the same woman turned up demanding her baby back - we have no power to say no so despite our best efforts to persuade her otherwise, she took poor Lola back. I have no doubt we will see her again, I just hope she doesn't wait until it's too late to save her.

So despite all this, most of the sloths are doing well - except for the recent mange outbreak !!! It's hugely common in sloths and we get wild ones coming in to us all the time covered in it. Mange is basically a type of parasitic mite that burrows into the skin and causes a huge itchy mess. Even I have managed to catch it, even though it is supposed to be species specific - I am now a TRUE sloth wrangler. Today we decided it was time to get rid of it from the babies before it spreads any further. Unfortunately, we can't give them Ivermectin which is what any other animal would be given. So we use natural remedies - which has had a quite funny outcome. We mixed Achiote seeds with coconut oil, forming a bright red oily dye that we massaged into the skin. So we now have a whole bunch of permanently BRIGHT red sloth babies, and a bright red buttercup. It looks ridiculous. I had to include some photos -

Ubu after his dye treatment:

Me and Ubu:

Poco:

Stephanie and Cosmo :

So all in all January (so far) has been a fairly dramatic and rainy month - although the sun has come out this last week and given us some beautiful weather finally! Despite all the drama though, the last 2 months have probably been the best yet ... I have met some amazing people and my project is finally looking up :-)

Lets all please keep our fingeres crossed for red poo in 2 weeks time ....

A rollercoaster start to the New Year

So 2011 at Aviarios started quite dramatically with the loss of 2 babies - Tiny Myte (Bradypus) and Elliot (Choloepus). They both died on the same night and as of yet, we don't know why. Tiny Myte is pictured below:

The following day, we were surprised by the birth of twins! We had no idea the mother, Mocha, was pregnant so it came as a complete shock to find her giving birth at all - never mind to twins !! What is even more incredible is the fact that she is only just about 3 years old herself, which means she must have become pregnant at only around 2 !! All the literature claims that the two-fingered sloth only reaches sexual maturity at 3 - which is clearly not the case! Both the babies were incredibly well developed, weighing in at 315g and 325g. There is one boy and one girl, named Sebastian and Violet!

Unfortunately, because the mother was so young herself and had been hand raised in captivity, the birth of 2 babies was very stressful for her and she didn't react too well. She failed to bite through the umbilical cords so we had to cut them free then take the babies to properly finish the job. She didn't pass the placenta immediately and we had no idea whether to expect 1 or 2 ... but turns out when sloths have twins they only pass one ! We tried to reintroduce one of the twins to her, but she was so stressed she rejected it. They are now safe and warm in the incubator being fed goats milk every few hours! Here are some pictures ...

As if that wasn't enough drama for one day, we then had ANOTHER baby brought in. This one was much bigger though, probably around 11 months. It looks as though he may have been weaned from his mum a tiny bit too early, which meant that he sat in a bush next to a hotel for 5 days and didn't move. He is slowly starting to eat hibiscus flowers (sloth chocolate) from us but hopefully he will start accepting Almond leaves and can soon be released into the forest!

In the meantime, one of our volunteers, Kyle, managed to get biten on the chin by an adult Choloepus with paralysed legs - Chewbacca. Nothing is impossible it seems....

December and Christmas in Costa Rica!

So December started with A LOT of rain - not unusual for this time of year apparently! It rained so much that the water in the lagoon almost reached the B&B so everything was moved upstairs overnight to try to avoid any damage! The volunteer house flooded with water thigh deep which meant we had to rescue Maxi (the dog) and literally carry her out of there! Here are a couple of pictures I managed to take, including Jenny at the volunteer house:

Unfortunately neither of the dogs who used to live at the volunteer house are there any more. Titan hurt his back which resulted in his back legs being paralysed. After taking him to see a specialist in San Jose, it was discovered that he had been born without his back ribs as well as having a bony growth on his spine. He is still in San Jose having acupuncture and hydrotherapy to try and get some movement back but I'm not sure what's happening now. Since then, Maxi has been playing up, and after she decided that the newly planted palm trees were a good chew toy, it was decided that she needed to be re-homed to a family who could give her the attention she needs as a puppy! So the volly house is suddenly very quiet!

The new project is all set up and ready to go - I am just waiting on the equipment that still hasn't managed to get here yet. I need the carmine red dye as well as a spare daily diary device as a back up for the 3 I currently have. It was planned to have them sent out with a volunteer coming from the UK, but annoyingly it snowed in England and pretty much the whole country ground to a halt, brilliant. Anyway they are due to now arrive next week so hopefully I can finally begin my work - exciting stuff :-)

Christmas was lovely and sunny here in Costa Rica, but VERY different from back home - I missed the cliffe family a lot! It turns out Christmas puddings, mince pies and Christmas crackers are pretty much unheard of outside of England. But work carried on as normal here - the Sloths still needed looking after and people still wanted tours! Surprisingly we had, and still have, a lot of volunteers here! I spent Christmas afternoon on the beach with some friends and had a few drinks in the evening.

Just before Christmas, we had a surprise birth here at the sanctuary! It's almost impossible to tell when a Sloth is pregnant, so it really was a surprise when one of the volunteers found a tiny new born baby in with Busby and Goldie in the morning. We try not to let the Sloths here mate because we can never release the baby so unfortunately it is another mouth that needs feeding! Sadly, the mother didn't bite off the umbilical cord properly so the baby needed stitches, after which, Goldie rejected him. So he is now being hand raised by Judy. We named him Jacque Noel after the volunteer who found him. Not all is well with this tiny baby though - he has developed a worrying habit of stopping breathing after every feed which means Judy has to literally resuscitate him every time. Fingers crossed he is ok!

About a week ago, a man brought us an adult 3 fingered sloth as well as a tiny 2 fingered baby. Sadly, the baby had been left on the ground for too long and died during the day. It was thought that the adult had been electrocuted, but after being examined she had no burns or obvious injuries. We tried to release her but she suddenly deteriorated and so we aren't sure what the problem is. We are keeping her under close observation though so hopefully she will be ok. Just to add to the baby boom, 2 days ago we had a small Choloepus baby brought to us whose mother had been attacked and killed by a dog. She seems to be doing ok though and so has joined the other babies in the incubators.

Finally, we had a small panic with Mateo eating his carrots a bit too fast. We thought he had fallen asleep while eating, but he had actually choked on his food! He had become quite unresponsive and our vet had to force his finger down his throat to dislodge the carrot! Within 10 mins he was right as rain, but now gets hand fed his carrots one by one to stop him getting too excited again!

Oh... just as I was typing that last sentance we had a little earthquake! Not very exciting for anyone else here except me :-)

Lots of love x

Andrew Gray comes to visit!

Like I mentioned in my last post, Andrew Gray (the supervisor for my project from Manchester) has come out here to help decide what direction to take the project in. He arrived here on Thursday and already, we have come up with a really exciting plan for the study! I will summarise it briefly here...

So for those who don't know a massive amount about Sloths, they have a number of features that make them completely unique from other mammals. Firstly, they have a VERY low metabolic rate - it is thought that one meal takes up to a month to digest!! As well as this, they can't thermoregulate like other mammals; they act almost like reptiles and amphibians moving in and out of the sunlight to control their body temperature. In captivity they can't do this because they don't have any access to the sunshine - their enclosures are basically a uniform temperature.

So the idea we have come up with will basically involve me using 3 female Bradypus sloths, kept alone in standardised enclosures for 6 months. I will me carefully controlling everything myself including exactly what and how much they eat. I will be taking both the body temp's and the ambient temp every 4 hours for the full 6 months and will be able to compare these against each other. Along side this, the sloths will each be wearing a daily diary for the full time, recording exactly how long they spend active (I will then be able to compare this back to the temp...!)
The final piece in the puzzle will involve me monitoring the metabolic rate of each sloth using carmine red - so feeding them the die with one meal and recording the time until they give me some red poo - potentially up to a month! I will also be measuring humidity and rainfall levels throughout ... Sooo from all this I will be able to see how ambient temp, body temp, activity levels, humidity and rainfall affect the metabolic rate!

I hope for my final month here I will be able to head up to the new sanctuary in Monteverde where it is much cooler and compare how the sloths up there (that aren't naturally found there) are coping with the ones here! - exciting stuff!

Anyway I will collect some pics etc of the new enclosures and how the sloths are settling into them over the next few days and pop them up on here so you can see!

:-)

November happenings

I really have been getting a bit lazy with writing the blog - I will try and update it more often in the future! (By the time I come around to writing it, I forget what has been happening..)

Ok so firstly, MORE babies !! We literally have babies coming out of our ears at the moment, there aren't normally this many! Unfortunately the first one we received last week (named jessie) died of pneumonia. Then the day after, we received the youngest one yet - possibly hours old - it still had the umbilical cord attached! He was found early in the morning after a stormy night by one of the workers. We think that the mother gave birth, then the branch she was hanging from broke off and her and baby fell to the ground - but the baby was found wedged under the branch so the mother probably couldn't pick it up. We named this one Jessie boy, but unfortunately he too died a couple of nights ago. We think it was probably because he had an infection around the remaining umbilical cord and he was just too young to fight it :-(

And more sad news, a few of the younger ones have developed what can only be described as a 'sniffle'. They didn't seem to be doing too badly but sadly, Apollo died suddenly 2 nights ago and Ella isn't doing so well at the moment. However she is still eating fine so fingers crossed she can shake it off !! Apart from this though, everyone else is doing fine :-) The weather has been cold (for a sloth) and VERY rainy this week so they aren't enjoying that so much.

Ubu is a 6 month old Choloepus baby with paralysed back legs who I have been working with daily to try to get them working again! He's quite a character and has been making incredible improvements over the last week - moving his legs all by himself! I have even had him learning to climb on the 'jungle jim' - very sweet! I will get some pictures soon (when it stops raining.)

Anyway enough about the babies, we have had some naughty escapees! The new enclosures in the visitor centre were designed to be escape proof - obviously not well enough for determined sloths. The surprising thing is, the first escapee was the laziest, sleepiest sloth of all, Millie! We found her in the morning clinging to the outstide of the building fast asleep. She managed to do this every night until we figured out her route and ruined it for her. Then a week later one of the 2 Bradypus babies that are in there at the moment discovered he could climb over the wall and get to the people on the other side for cuddles! I first found him when I was on one of my night shifts - went to record what they were doing and found him sitting outside the enclosure happily munching on some leaves. He then escaped every hour for the whole night so he has now been relegated back with the others! This is Millie:

Judy and Luis finally arrived back from Monteverde today so they have lots of catching up to do on everything that has been going on! They weren't due back for another few weeks but the emergency with the babies has called for Judy's magic sloth whispering! I think buttercup is very glad to have her back (as we all are!)

I have been having a bit of a rethink about my project this week. After realising that I wont be able to manipulate the diet, I also realised that it is going to be much harder than I originally thought to change the structure of the enclosures and vary feeding times etc. Also, things like light levels are difficult to change as they are semi - indoors. However, I am not stuck for ideas of what to study; I am almost spoilt for choice! Luckily my supervisor is coming out here this week to help me decide exactly what to focus on and how to get around the problems. I will let you know what we decide on doing - its exciting stuff!

I saw my first ever wild Choloepus today in Cahuita - chilling in an Almond tree! On the sanctuary grounds there are 3 Choloepus that have been rehabiliated and released but have never really left, and they too live in Almond trees. Hopefully I will be able to tag these with the devices and use it as a nice intermediate comparison between wild and captive behaviours (They have access to all the things wild ones do and captive ones don't - direct sunlight, rain etc - but also only feed of one type of leaf, just like the captive sloths currently being rehabiliated!) So it will be interesting to compare their activity patterns and see how they differ - Do they sleep more or less than captive / wild sloths? Do they sleep / feed at similar times? Do they scratch more or less than in captivity? etc etc, you get the idea!

So right now I am going through the data from the daily diaries I have had on the captive Bradypus sloths, and working out the proportions of time spent doing each behaviour - VERY time consuming!! I have included a picture of what some of the data looks like!

Anyway thats just a brief update of whats has been happening recently. I'm sure I have missed things out but I will write as things happen in future!

xx

babies and sloth wee

Ok so here are some pictures of the new babies as promised. It turns out we have actually had 5 new ones this week, not 3 as I said earlier. We had 2 more Bradypus brought in, both from the same man. Sadly it looks like they have been tied up by the wrist for a while though because they have clear markings there and don't enjoy anyone touching the arms - it's very sad. They are doing well though, and are very cute !!

I got to try out the fancy new microscope yesterday... we found some strange white paste-ish stuff in the urine of some of the sloths so I had a look to see if I could shed any light on it. It looked a bit like a close up view of white goo. We have no real idea what it could be, possibly calcium deposits (Rabbits get something similar), but who knows. They seem fine and well in themselves so time will tell. I have added a delicious picture of the poo/wee sample and microscope too.

Also while I remember, I was watching Attenborough's life of mammals a couple of days ago and the part about the Sloth's came on ... It definitely shows actual David Attenborough himself sitting here at Aviarios eating his breakfast - I got very excited that he was actually here !! And I never even knew ..! xx