Panama Update #164
May 10, 2009
We saw a sloth this afternoon while walking in the Quarry Heights area with Carmen and Santosh. It was on the side of the road and crawling back toward the forest. Carmen said it was a 3 toed sloth. I had seen one or two before when they were high up in the tree, but this one was on the ground. It cannot walk on all fours, only pull itself along on its belly using its front claws. We watched it for about a half an hour. Carmen said they only come down from the trees once a week to take a bowel movement. She thought this one was a young adult, as it was on the smallish size, like a combination of a monkey and raccoon. She said they can get real fat. They are slow all the time, but when they are on the ground they are very awkward and have trouble maneuvering and are completely unprotected from whatever predators are around. He (or she) crawled for the closest tree and found one that was very skinny. It looked like the tree would never support its weight, but it moves with such balance and agility once it gets off the ground, that when it got to the top of that tree it was able to lean over to get to another branch on a bigger tree. They are built for hanging in the trees. It moves so slowly so it can test its weight to see if the new branch will hold it. It kept one claw on one branch and did the splits while it slowly leaned over to the other tree. It was like watching a Tai Chi master. I had never seen anything move so slow, but so smooth and perfectly controlled.
