Panama's Slowest Superstars

Here I am poised to capture some passionate sloth snogs on film...

For one type of sloth, 9,000 years of remote island living seems to have finally taken its toll. As if additional sluggishness was at all necessary, the pint-sized pygmy sloth of Escudo de Veraguas has laughed (slowly) in the face of its complex evolutionary history and turned to a life of drugs. The leaves that make up the most part of its diet have been found to contain a compound with similar chemical properties to Valium, meaning that these animals are both unusually tiny (almost half the size of their mainland cousins) and very, very stoned. It’s no wonder they’re always smiling…

Lynne and Lucy enjoying some quality
mother-daughter time

I’ve only just come down from my very own high, this having been induced not by red mangrove leaves, but by sloths themselves. I recently spent a week out in Gamboa, Panama, on a mission to film and photograph the pygmy sloth’s larger cousins, Bradypus variegatus, and two-toed Choloepus hoffmanni, at the Gamboa Sloth Sanctuary and Wildlife Rescue Centre. The sanctuary, run by the Pan American Conservation Association (APPC), is the only wildlife rescue and rehabilitation facility in the entire country, and over the course of its fourteen year history it's been responsible for the care and release of over 5000 individual animals.


With new arrivals coming in thick and fast,  the APPC HQ is a very busy place indeed - at the time of my visit, it was providing temporary residence to over sixty former jungle-dwelling patients, from tamanduas (a.k.a. the original Clanger) to opossums and owls. And it plays host not just to an array of kooky critters, but to some pretty interesting people, too. Super sloth wrangler Lynne is surrogate mum to a jaguar named Fiona, and can often be found driving around the hotel complex with a spider monkey sporting a nappy attached to her front.

Other animal lodgers include Pino the Rothschild’s porcupine, a peculiarly prickly character complete with a huge, strawberry doughnut-like nose. Despite being the smallest of all the porcupine species, she still sports an impressive 30,000-quill strong suit of armour that she uses to defend herself against predators. My attempt at capturing this rogue rodent enjoying a snack on film revealed that, while watermelon might be quite to her taste, peanuts are most certainly a firm favourite...

Lucy enjoys a close encounter with Pino the porcupine, in spite of her 30,000-quill strong suit of armour...

Whilst relishing a rousing outdoor runaround, Lindy the tamandua made for a rather unusual shooting companion on one particular afternoon. These arboreal anteaters are close cousins of the sloth, with 40 centimetre long, sticky tongues and huge claws that enable them to dig out and lap up around 9,000 small insects a day. I can only hope that, for our sake, Lindy’s rigorous searching of our hair, legs, ears and armpits for snacks proved far less fruitful than her earlier forays at the base of a nearby tree…

Yet another outlandish lodger is Valencia the tapir. She was hand-raised by the APPC team after arriving as an orphan just over four years ago. Her terrible table manners having since been excused, she now lives a life of luxury in the sanctuary’s back garden, with bananas and human fuss on tap, as well as her very own private swimming pool and trusty agouti sidekick.

But the stars of the show were, of course, the sloths. This slow-moving bunch of soon-to-be calendar big-names were top sports, and it wasn’t long until we’d found our most photogenic duo. Orphaned, three-toed Rafa and Darien flaunted their fluffy faces (complete with trendy side-parting, in Darien’s case) with all the skill and veracity - though admittedly not speed - of a pair of America’s Next Top Model finalists.

Basket bliss: Bex with baby Branston and Pickle

Sadly, sloths have a pretty bad rap in certain parts of Central America: they’re often thought of as being dirty, lazy animals that carry a whole host of diseases and parasites. It’s these sorts of widely held misconceptions, along with a lack of environmental education, that remain at the core of many of Panama’s animal rescue cases. Two of the Bradypus sloths I got to meet had been victims of very recent human cruelty: both had suffered serious injuries - one, a broken arm and the other, partial paralysis - after being used as balls by children.

But attitudes are changing. The Gamboa Sloth Sanctuary now offers free admission to locals as part of a ploy to help them better understand and appreciate these animals. According to sanctuary president Néstor Correa, it seems to be working. In addition to this, the organisation has been hard at work developing various training programmes and workshops, as well as educational outreach programmes for local schools.

Darien looks smug while Rafa contemplates the fact that he may never be able to pull off a side parting quite like she can...

You can find out more about APPC and the vital work that they do by visiting their website. ZSL's EDGE of Existence team are also going to great lengths to try and save the critically endangered pygmy sloth from extinction - discover more about the project and how you can support it here.