Originally published 2022-02-14.
Highway officers in Ecuador found an unusual obstacle on the road outside Quevedo: a small, shaggy sloth wrapped tightly around a metal post in the middle of the carriageway. The officers moved it out of harm's way, a vet checked it over, and once it was declared healthy it was returned to its natural habitat. Photos of the rescue, shared on Facebook by Ecuador's transit authority, quickly spread around the world.
The story is a cheerful one, but it also shows how often slow-moving wildlife ends up in dangerous places as roads and farms push into forest.
The rescue near Quevedo
The photos show a patrol pickup marked "Patrulla de Carretera" (highway patrol), and an officer in a high-visibility vest crouching beside the sloth. The animal had its long claws locked around the base of a roadside pole, the kind that holds up crash barriers. Sloths grip anything that feels like a branch when they are frightened, so prying one loose takes patience.
The officers carried the sloth to safety and arranged for a veterinarian to examine it. In a follow-up Facebook message, the agency thanked the public for their concern and said the vet had found the animal in good condition to go back to its habitat. It also said it would keep supporting causes like this together with the public.
Interestingly, the agency's post called the animal a "sloth bear." That is almost certainly a translation slip from Spanish, where a sloth is called oso perezoso, literally "lazy bear." Sloth bears are a real species, but they live in South Asia, not South America.
Where it happened
Quevedo is a city of around 178,000 people in Los Ríos Province, in Ecuador's lowland interior. It sits beside the Vinces River and is one of the country's main farming hubs, exporting bananas, cacao, passion fruit and coffee. It is also a road junction: major routes linking the Pacific coast with the Andes meet there.
That mix of busy highways and farmland surrounded by patches of forest is exactly the kind of landscape where wildlife and traffic collide. When trees are cleared, animals that live in the canopy sometimes have to cross open ground to reach the next patch of cover.
Which kind of sloth was it?
All living sloths belong to two groups that are only distantly related: two-toed sloths (genus Choloepus) and three-toed sloths (genus Bradypus). Both live in Ecuador. According to the conservation group behind Ecuador Forest of Clouds, the three-toed sloth is active in daytime, while the two-toed sloth is mainly nocturnal.
Judging from the photos, the rescued animal appears to be a two-toed sloth: it has a pale, pinkish face, a rounded snout and two large claws on each front limb. The police did not name the species, so that identification is our best reading of the pictures rather than an official one.
Why sloths end up on roads
Sloths are built for life in the trees. On the ground they can barely crawl, managing around 3 metres a minute according to figures cited on Wikipedia. Yet they do come down regularly. Most sloths descend roughly once a week to urinate and defecate at the base of a tree, a habit scientists still debate. Some suggest it helps the tree or supports the moths that live in sloth fur. Whatever the reason, it is the riskiest part of their routine, because on the ground they are almost defenceless.
Other reasons a sloth may be found on a road include:
- Crossing between trees where forest has been broken up by fields, fences or highways.
- Following power lines or poles, which look like branches. In Costa Rica, contact with electrical lines is one of the leading recorded causes of sloth deaths.
- Being disturbed by tree felling, burning or dogs.
Slow by design, not lazy
The name suggests laziness, but a sloth's slowness is an energy-saving strategy. Leaves are low in calories and hard to digest, so sloths run on a metabolism about half of what would be expected for a mammal their size. Their body temperature varies more than most mammals', and digesting a meal can take days.
Their fur is a small ecosystem of its own. Grooves in the hair host green algae, which help camouflage them from predators such as jaguars and harpy eagles, and the coat also carries moths, beetles and fungi. Sloths are also surprisingly good swimmers, faster in water than on land.
If you find a sloth on the road
The Quevedo officers did the right thing by calling in a vet before release. If you live in or visit sloth country and come across one in trouble:
- Keep yourself safe first. Pull over well away from traffic and use hazard lights.
- Call local wildlife authorities, police or a rescue centre rather than handling the animal. Sloths have long, strong claws and can be injured by well-meaning but rough handling.
- Do not take it home or keep it as a pet. Sloths are trafficked as pets, and they do badly in captivity without specialist care.
- Do not feed it. Their diet and digestion are very specialised.
Most sloth species are not endangered, but two are: the maned three-toed sloth of Brazil's Atlantic Forest is listed as vulnerable, and the pygmy three-toed sloth, found on a single island off Panama, is critically endangered. For the commoner species, the main threats are habitat loss, power lines, roads and the pet trade.
A small rescue with a bigger message
The pictures went viral because a sloth hugging a pole is irresistible. The more useful lesson is that wildlife rescues work best when people stop, keep the animal safe, and bring in someone qualified to check it. The Quevedo highway patrol did all three, and one slow traveller went back to the trees.
Sources: Ecuador transit authority (CTE) on Facebook; Ecuador Forest of Clouds: Sloths; Wikipedia: Sloth; Wikipedia: Quevedo, Ecuador. Photos: Comisión de Tránsito del Ecuador.
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