It looks like a sloth, an extremely slow-moving animal, can move quite fast, especially when its baby's life is said to be dangling in the balance, quite literally as seen in a rare video captured recently. A group of tourists in Costa Rica tripped across a three-fingered sloth's birth late last month. It was an alarming yet mesmerizing moment to witness for this tour group.
In a rare, heart-stopping video, a sloth seemingly thought fast and hurriedly wrapped her arm around her falling newborn that was plunged from the branch almost immediately after its birth. In an interview, tour guide Steven Vela said that it was certainly the weirdest thing he's ever seen. Also, in the rare video captured, the baby sloth is seen up in the air for a few seconds with just an umbilical cord stopping it from falling to the ground.
The last few parts of the video are no longer filled with so much anxiety as the mother sloth takes her baby in a tight embrace, and comforts it. From the Sloth Conservation Foundation in Costa Rica, Dr. Rebecca Cliffe, said, capturing a situation like this is tremendously rare.
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A Moment, Not All People Are Lucky Enough to Witness
Having been familiar with sloths for many years now, Cliffe said that seeing a three-fingered sloth deliver a baby sloth is something not all people are fortunate enough to witness. She added that sloths are characterized as "secretive animals" living high in the rainforest canopy and specializing in camouflage.
More so, seeing one in the wild is quite a fate, but to witness one delivering its baby out in the open is extra special.
Cliffe admitted though, that with her many years of working with sloths, she has witnessed a similar occurrence in the past. "I was lucky enough," she said, "to witness a similar event in 2013." The sloth expert also said that one of the sloths she was able to track and study while getting her Ph.D., got down from the tree and delivered about two meters away from her. It was what she said was surprisingly similar to the recently-captured video.
Sloth's Giving Birth a Much Celebrated Moment
Vela, who has been with Canoa Adventura in La Fortuna, Costa Rica for eight years now, said he has never witnessed anything like the incident. While tourists can typically see snakes, toucans, monkeys, and iguanas, in this particular occurrence, the tour group was quite lucky. As he said earlier, he could not believe what he was seeing. Admitting he was so excited, they were at the right moment and at the right time.
What the tourists just witnessed may occur in an astonishingly high number of births of sloths. From the limited number of observations of sloth birth that the animal experts know about, this particular occurrence has taken place in many cases.
Sloth experts know too, that in nearly every case, a mother sloth descends to very low heights to deliver her baby. This is quite a precautionary measure to avoid injury in case the baby falls to the ground. It also reduces the distance that the mother sloth has to travel to get her baby from the ground should there be an occurrence of fall.