BEACHCOMBER

104 Years oLD anD as BLissFuLLY sLoTHFuL as eVer…

JANUARY is well over, so enough time has elapsed to make a judgment about 2020. What with Covid and Trump, last year stands accused of being the most awful in history, but one story goes a long way towards redeeming it.

By way of introduction, I must tell you that I have long had the highest admiration for sloths, which have always struck me as ideal role models. They nonchalantly hang upside down in trees minding their own business, moving only when essential or to descend once a week to go to the toilet on the ground. They rarely interact with other sloths, making them a perfect model for untroubled social distancing and isolation.

The latest news was communicated to me by Dr Rebecca Cliffe, who is the founder of SloCo, the Sloth Conservation Foundation, based in Costa Rica. Her report centres on the discovery and detailed observation of a three-toed female sloth which has adopted a two-toed baby.

This may not strike you as remarkable, but when you know as much about sloths as Dr Cliffe, or even myself, you will realise how extraordinary it is. Two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths diverged evolutionarily from each other around 30 million years ago and live highly separate lives. They have both decided that hanging around in trees is a good lifestyle, but two-toed sloths are nocturnal while their three-toed distant cousins are more active during the day, and three-toed sloths are fussy vegetarians while two-toed sloths eat almost anything. In the entire animal world, adoption of a different species is very rare and for sloths, it had never been seen before. For two species that diverged 30 million years ago, it is as surprising as a cat adopting a dog. Yet watching baby two-toes clinging to foster-mummy three-toes has left observers in no doubt that the relationship is a clear case of adoption.

All sloths, of course, have three toes on each hind leg and the numerical difference between two-toed and three-toed is restricted to their front legs (so I suppose Dr Cliffe is right to call them two-fingered and threefingered) but I doubt that the adoption was based on a miscount. The adoptive mother must have noticed by now, but she is clearly not concerned.

This example of inter-species tolerance is yet another example of sloth behaviour that humans could well emulate. If you want more evidence, you can find a heart-warming video on the slothconservation.com website. Just scroll through to the Blogs section and you will find the whole story beautifully told.