Winning Wildlife Photo Features Face-off Between a Sloth and a Dog, Highlights Heartbreaking Conservation Issue

American photographer Suzi Eszterhas submitted a photo showing a vulnerable sloth facing off against a large dog to the 58th Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition hosted by the London Natural History Museum (NHM).

The upcoming exhibition will run at the museum before the tour starts. It will feature 100 of the best pictures of wildlife judged based on their creativity, originality, and technical excellence. The contest attracted many photographers of different ages from 93 countries.

'Sloth Dilemma' Photo Highly Commended by NHM

Eszterhas' entry is titled the "Sloth Dilemma," which features a face-off between a frightened sloth and a large dog in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica. Expert jurors judged the photo as "highly commended" in the Urban Wildlife category as it highlights a heartbreaking conservation issue of sloths.

Sloths can be found from Honduras to Peru and Bolivia. Sadly, these animals face many threats, such as habitat loss, power line electrocutions, genetic isolation and deformities, vehicle collisions, urban development, tourism, illegal trade, and dog attacks.

Eszterhas told Newsweek that she was documenting urban sloths in Costa Rica as well as the conservation effort of the Sloth Conservation Foundation when she took the photo.

"I've spent months with their team in the field trying to show how sloths are having trouble adapting to the modern world and all of the deforestations it brings with it," Eszterhas said.

She said that the sloth had just made it across the road and was trying to crawl on the ground to reach the next clump of trees when it froze after spotting the large dog. Usually, this is a deadly situation for the sloth because dog attacks are the second leading cause of sloth deaths in the country.

But the dog only sniffed the sloth and walked away. It could have easily killed the sloth, but it was trained to learn not to attack sloths and other animals on the ground. The Sloth Conservation Foundation's Oh My Dog program is a success; over 100 dog owners have participated in these programs.

She noted that sloths are vulnerable to dogs because they cannot jump or run, especially in urban areas when their only way to travel between trees is to crawl on the ground. Sloths, unlike most animals, do not have many defense mechanisms against their predator except for camouflage, which means they have no way to protect themselves when they are on the ground and highly visible.

Dog Attacks A Big Problem for Sloths

A 2017 paper published in Biological Conservation revealed that dogs threaten over 180 wild animal species, and 11 are now extinct because of them. The paper pointed out that dogs have become the third most-damaging mammal after cats and rats, but this fact has no media attention.

The Sloth Conservation Foundation said that dogs pose a great risk to wildlife through predation, the transmission of diseases, competition, and hybridization. Regions most affected by this include Southeast Asia, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, and Asia.

Furthermore, dog attacks are now the second leading cause of death to sloths in Costa Rice, wherein two to three animals per week are injured due to dogs or cats. The chances of a sloth encountering a dog are high in urban areas in the country because dogs roam around and humans are destroying their habitat.

The 'Oh My Dog' project was launched in 2019 to reduce dog attacks on wildlife in Costa Rica. It was designed to have a three-pronged approach: reduce the need for arboreal wildlife to travel on the ground, reduce dogs roaming unsupervised, and community awareness regarding responsible dog ownership.

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