Slothing in Feb

I have been terrible at keeping this up to date recently... things have been busy at the sloth sanctuary!! So this is likely to be a very long post, my fingers are aching at the mere prospect of typing all of the February happenings !! Anyway, here we go :-)

This month started with the arrival of Suzie Eszterhas; a proffesional wildlife photographer working for Ranger Rick, a Nat Geo magazine. She stayed here for several weeks taking some incredible shots of the resident sloths and also a few wild visitors. On her very first day here, one of our rehabilitated and released 3-fingered females (Esmerelda) ever so kindly gave birth, came down from her Cecropia tree, crawled right by us showing off her teeny tiny new born baby, then proceded to climb the tree directly infront of us - amazing !!! She is still hanging around (literally) giving us a nice peek at how the baby is doing every now and again.

Also during Suzie's stay here, all of my study females managed to come into heat simulatenously, all yelling for a boyfriend - as 3-fingered females do. They stay in heat for approx 7 - 10 days, during which time they poo/pee everyday and let out very frequent, very high pitched and very loud screams, therefore attracting all the local neighbourhood boys to the sanctuary. We must have had almost 15 wild males decend on my girls over the course of one day !! Now this is great for Suzie, but a problem for manyyy reasons. Firstly, they have a habit of groping my girls through the cages, and I DONT want a pregnant lady sloth in my study (nor do we want pregnant captive sloths full stop). Another problem is that my females are clearly so irresistable that the invading males tend to either rape / attack any other sloth they come across. This was terrible news for Esmerelda and her baby since she was harrased by a fierce 'rapey' male for days. All this tension in the air ment that sloth fights were erupting everywhere, and when two males fight the aim seems to be to throw the other one out the tree. Unfortuntely it rained male sloths for a couple of days. This is a horrible thing to watch happen, but luckily most of the fall-ees were perfectly fine, just a bruised ego.

One of the wild males determined to get into my room (never keep sloth poop in your room)

Volunteers who have been to the sanctuary may be familiar with Randy. He is a wild male that so frequently visits the females he has been named approprately. Obviously, he was on the scene during all the unfolding female drama, but was clearly a lover not a fighter since he sadly was thrown out of his tree during a sloth brawl. As he fell, he hit a branch on the way down, completely smashing all the bones in his upper arm (it was hanging as the most sickening angle ...). He valiently attempted to climb back up the tree, but our staff scooped him up and brought him into the slothpital. The sanctuary couldn't leave him in such a state so sent him on a holiday to San Jose with our vet, Marcelo, for surgery. He is now the proud owner of one bald, titanium-held-together arm sporting impressive scars. The good news is that he is well on the road to recovery and after his final X-ray in April, he will be released back into the forest to be randy once again.

While speaking of release, we released the 2-fingered female fondly known as 'Mom' this month. She arrived almost 7 months ago with a baby and a badly infected dog bite on her shoulder. The wound was treated and she regained full use of her arm but sadly rejected her baby in the process (who is still here and doing fine). After a few complications with the healing, she was ready to go and is now a happy resident of one of the Almond tree's on the sanctuary grounds.

Now the part that everyone loves the best ... babies !!! The twins that I mentioned in my last post are doing brilliantly (named Sebastian and Violet) - they are adorable. To add to the pile of cuteness, on valentines day we recieved the smallest little bundle of fluff on record; a tiny tiny new born 3-fingered baby weighing just 149g and measuring a minute 12cm from nose to teeny tiny tail. She is named Mirra (short for miracle) and is fully formed and perfectly healthy! New borns aren't usually that small, so we think she was probably a twin who was rejected as the weaker one. She is happily paired up with another very small baby recieved this month named Velcro (he is clingy...) but is a 2-fingered, making a very cute pairing.

Half way through the month, we had a group of people bring us an adult 3-fingered female with a baby. They were found on the ground cold and wet, so were brought in to be checked over. It turned out that the female was fine, she had just fallen and gotten too cold to climb back up the tree. On first inspection the baby seemed fine, but upon release she rejected him. He was brought back here and I took him out for a walk - only to notice something a little special - he had no coordination what-so-ever and his left side was very tense and stiff. I took him to see if he could climb which turned out to be a complete disaster - he definately can't climb. We think that he bashed his head when he fell, meaning that, like a human after a severe head injury, he has spasticity. This means that when he tries to clamber about, he can at best only use 3 of his legs, and completely misses the bars with each grab. More often than not he holds onto himself, then lets go with his other arm thinking he is holding on .... so I am always there to catch him. Despite this though, he is doing very well and I take him out daily to practice his climbing technique - He is lovingly now known as Cory.

Me and Cory:


Ok onto my project. I GOT RED POO !!! (very exciting moment for me). It turns out I shouldn't have been looking for a pile of bright red pellets, but when I chop them in half, the inside changes from a normal green colour to a red-ish brown when the dye is present. I discovered this after giving more dye to all my 3 girls, then using a sharp knife to open up every pellet individually. I was able to seperate the pieces into either red or green and make percentages of dye-pellets to normal-pellets. And the news you have all been waiting for - it took 25, 27 and 30 days for my 3 females to produce lovely all green poops for me !!! Thats a long time spent digesting ..... amazing !!!! I am now preparing to repeat this and will be giving them another tasty drink of carmine red over the next couple of days.

I had a minor disaster with the daily diaries - a couple of my batteries broke, meaning I was a battery short. So for the last few days Jewel has been device-less while we arrange new battery packs to be sent out. Apart from this though, everything is going perfectly and I am getting some very interesting data! For starters it seems they can control their body temperature much better than previously stated in the literature!

Poo collection!

Me with Jewel:

So as of today, Animal Planet are here to start filming a sloth sanctuary documentary. The producer, Lucy Cook has some very exciting things in the pipeline so keep your eyes peeled towards the end of the year when it will be aired (globally if all goes to plan)!

This is how you get an unwilling 2-fingered sloth out a box .... flowers. Lots of sloth chocolate flowers.

I dont yet have pictures of some of the new babies etc since my camera is still off being fixed. But I am expecting it back over the next couple of weeks so when I do, I will add many-a cute picture !!

I hope all is well with everyone, I WILL write this more often in future to avoid this super long essay situation ..

P.S. my mange is still raging.

Sloth research fundraiser !!!

Check it out ... http://www.crowdrise.com/thedailydiary/fundraiser/sandrabirnhak

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