HOME → RTWINFO → Jepson Trip → Jepson Girl's Blog → Post #011

The Jepson Girls' World Trip Blog

Sept 25, Month 4

Sleepy Two-Toed Sloths - By Sophia

We went to an animal rescue in Costa Rica and we saw two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths. I chose to study the two-toed sloths.

The rain forest trees are very important to sloths because they hang from trees nearly all of their life. They also sleep in trees for 15 to 20 hours every day. They mate in trees and even give birth in trees. Sometimes you can even find dead sloths in trees because they have such a good and tight grip in trees. They mostly remain motionless.

They eat leaves, shoots, fruits, nuts, berries, bark, and small rodents. The food in their bellies can take about a month to digest and their stomachs are extremely large. They get almost of their water from eating plants with a lot of water in them.

There are many interesting facts about baby two-toed sloth. The mother is pregnant for four to five months. The baby travels on its mom for the first five weeks of the baby's life. The baby is born with claws and will stay with the mother for about nine months. They begin eating their mother's favorite leaves after one or two months. The mother sloth has only one baby a year.

Before I visited the animal rescue in Costa Rica, I didn't know that there was more than one kind of sloth. There are many differences between the two-toed and the three-toed sloths. The two-toed sloths are larger, have a tail, and have more prominent snouts than the three-toed sloths. The two-toed sloths have longer fur and are actually faster than the three-toed sloth. The two-toed sloths prefer to descend from trees head first while the three-toed sloths like to do it the opposite way. The two-toed sloth is also meaner than the three-toed sloth.

When we went to the animal rescue, I was very excited. When it came tot he baby sloth part, we got to hold a baby two-toed sloth, which was separated from her mother. The baby sloth was clutching a blanket that was supposed to represent its mom. The sloth felt so delicate and very soft, like my dog after he takes a bath. It's snout was pinkish and it also kind of felt like I was holding a human baby. I think baby two-toed sloths are adorable.