The woman who lost a dog and gained 200 sloths (BBC)

By Vibeke Venema
BBC World Service

Monique Pool first fell in love with sloths when she took in an orphan from a rescue centre. Since then many sloths have spent time in her home on their way back to the forest - but even she found it hard to cope when she had to rescue 200 at once.

It all began in 2005 when Pool lost her dog, a mongrel called Sciolo, and called the Suriname Animal Protection Society to see if they'd found it. They hadn't, but they told her about Loesje (or Lucia), a baby three-toed sloth they didn't know how to look after. Pool offered to take it - and was instantly smitten. "They're very special animals to look at," she says. "They always have a smile on their face and seem so tranquil and peaceful."

Sloths are gentle creatures, but are far from easy to keep. Their diet presents enormous problems, and the local zoo had shied away from the task.

Pool sought advice from Judy Arroyo at the famous sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, who told her she must feed Loesje goat's milk - cow's milk would be fatal. But goat's milk is rarely available in Suriname and had to be sent over from the US. The leaves that sloths eat are also hard to source - and must be fresh.

Loesje had a surprise in store - she turned out to be a "he". Male three-toed sloths display a characteristic spot on their backs when they're a year old. "But we carried on calling him Loesje because he was used to the name," says Pool. He was her very first charge but died after two years. "I didn't know what was wrong with him," she says. She wished she could just ask him. The experience taught her how little expertise there was in the rehabilitation and care of three-toed sloths, but she built up a network of contacts and hasn't had a youngster die on her since.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26734289
http://www.xenarthrans.org/
http://www.aiunau.org/en/activities/sloth-international-day
http://www.greenfundsuriname.org/en/ (adopt a sloth)
http://blog.conservation.org/2013/05/sloths-the-guiana-shields-most-adorable-ambassadors/




Bonus: sloths are related to armadillos and anteaters, who get a little mention. Also, this is a story out of Suriname, which seldom makes it into the news otherwise.