News articles on sloths
Mongabay.com news articles on sloths in blog format. Updated regularly.
The secret to the surging popularity of sloths: viral Web videos
(01/16/2013) Sloths have been the beneficiary of a surge of popularity of late. A big part of that has been filmmaker Lucy Cooke's footage of baby sloths at the world's only sloth orphanage in Costa Rica. Posted on the Internet in 2010, a 90-second clip went viral and has now been watched millions of times. That video, called ‘Meet the Sloths’, 'attracted celebrity fans from Ricky Gervaise to Ashton Kutcher and turned the sleepy residents of the world’s only sloth orphanage into international superstars,' according to Cooke.
Less than 100 pygmy sloths survive
(05/24/2012) The pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus) is one of the world's most endangered mammals, according to a detailed survey of the population, which found less than 100 sloths hanging on in their island home. Only described by researchers in 2001, the pygmy sloth lives on a single uninhabited island off the coast of Panama. But human impacts, such as deforestation of the island's mangroves, may be pushing the species to extinction.
Forgotten Species: the marooned pygmy three-toed sloth
(03/16/2010) Many people consider tropical islands mini-paradises: sanctuaries cut-off from the rest of the world. Some species flourish on islands for the same reason. With few predators and a largely consistent environment, once a species has comfortably adapted to its habitat there's little to do but thrive. That is until something changes: like humans showing up. Changes in confined island ecosystems often have large and rapid impacts, too fast and too big for marooned species to survive.
The faster, fiercer, and always surprising sloth, an interview with Bryson Voirin
(10/25/2009) Sloths sleep all day; they are always slow; and they are gentle animals. These are just some of the popular misconceptions that sloth-scientist and expert tree-climber, Bryson Voirin, is overturning. After growing up among the wild creatures of Florida, spending his high school years in Germany, and earning a Bachelors degree in biology and environment at the New College of Florida, Voirin found his calling. At the New College of Florida, Voirin "met Meg Lowman, the famous canopy pioneer who invented many of the tree climbing techniques everyone uses today."
