Manuel Antonio National Park and Curu Wildlife Refuge
We really want to be number one in everything… we almost took our flash lamps instead of our binoculars. The sun was just starting to peak through the clouds and the heavy mist as we awoke. The different trails were explored by our guests, all of whom came back to the beach station with great stories about the many different animals that we got the chance to see. But no one came back without seeing one of the most interesting, spoiled desires of Mother Nature, the ultimate expression of the skyward concentration of nutrients available to foliage feeders is found in this animal.
Long claws and limbs, slow deliberate movements, camouflaged by their greenish tint unusual for a mammal and a tireless ability to hang up side down from a limb. Related to the anteaters but it does not like ants, in the same order as armadillos but does not bury itself in the ground, it occurs nowhere else on the planet but in the Neotropics, but at a first glance resembles a Koala, slow in movements but is the motor home of around 300 species of moths, mites, ticks, beetles, even algae.
They want to be so odd, that even going to the bathroom is different; they laboriously and deliberately descend from their lofty trees, poke a hole in the ground with their stubby tails and carefully bury their feces. You might wonder how much difference it can make to deposit the pellets at the base of the tree compared to scattering them from high above, it is easy to visualize a cascade of pellets dropping from 100 feet and been caught by bromeliads, vines and branches, but why come down of a safety home? Still unknown.
Two species of this creature occur in Costa Rica, both very much alike; one prefers the nightlife of the rainforest while the other one works very hard to look active during the day. I think at this point you know which animal am I writing of… the three-toed sloth of course!
We really want to be number one in everything… we almost took our flash lamps instead of our binoculars. The sun was just starting to peak through the clouds and the heavy mist as we awoke. The different trails were explored by our guests, all of whom came back to the beach station with great stories about the many different animals that we got the chance to see. But no one came back without seeing one of the most interesting, spoiled desires of Mother Nature, the ultimate expression of the skyward concentration of nutrients available to foliage feeders is found in this animal.
Long claws and limbs, slow deliberate movements, camouflaged by their greenish tint unusual for a mammal and a tireless ability to hang up side down from a limb. Related to the anteaters but it does not like ants, in the same order as armadillos but does not bury itself in the ground, it occurs nowhere else on the planet but in the Neotropics, but at a first glance resembles a Koala, slow in movements but is the motor home of around 300 species of moths, mites, ticks, beetles, even algae.
They want to be so odd, that even going to the bathroom is different; they laboriously and deliberately descend from their lofty trees, poke a hole in the ground with their stubby tails and carefully bury their feces. You might wonder how much difference it can make to deposit the pellets at the base of the tree compared to scattering them from high above, it is easy to visualize a cascade of pellets dropping from 100 feet and been caught by bromeliads, vines and branches, but why come down of a safety home? Still unknown.
Two species of this creature occur in Costa Rica, both very much alike; one prefers the nightlife of the rainforest while the other one works very hard to look active during the day. I think at this point you know which animal am I writing of… the three-toed sloth of course!
