Come hang out with our two-toed sloth family to celebrate Lunesta’s 18th birthday on this #ZooToYou! Educator Katie feeds the birthday girl a few of her favorite treats while sharing information about the fascinating and endearing Linne’s two-toed sloths at Stone Zoo.
Hello everyone and welcome to today’s live zoo to you my name is katie i’m an educator here at the stone zoo and we are celebrating a very special birthday today today is lunesta our female lin’s two-toed sloth um today is her 18th birthday so we’re going to be celebrating with a little bit of a sloth cake and learning a little bit more about our sloths so if you
Have any questions during the course of our video today please feel free to type them in the comment section and we’ll do our very best to answer them for you so let’s talk a little bit about this cake that we’re going to be feeding our sloths and then we’ll get to meet our sloths up close so sloths are primarily herbivores they will eat eggs on occasion as well
So i have some of their all-time favorite veggies in here including a little candle made out of some sweet potatoes celebrate her 18th birthday we have some sweet potato some greens some apple and zucchini as well and some lavender lavender is edible for humans and it’s also edible for other mammals too i don’t know if the sloths have ever had it so we’ll see if
They’d like any of this but let’s go ahead and meet some of our sloths up close so up front and center is nero it is not the birthday boy today but he is sure looking like he could use some of this sloth cake mural is our male sloth and he is 16 years old and over here we have the birthday girl so we can get a good look at her this is lunesta and today is lunesta’s
18th birthday and she is all curled up with taco so if you tune in at the beginning of august we’re going to be celebrating taco’s birthday too where taco is going to be turning one year old so we’re going to chat a little bit about our slots as we watch them enjoy some of their favorite treats here we’ll see if lunesta is interested in some apple that’s usually a
Favorite there we go and taco might want some too so like i mentioned earlier we have lynn’s two-toed sloths here at stone zoo there are um two different species of slots there are two-toed and three-toed sloths and within those species there are some different subspecies so in total there are six different subspecies of sloths living in central and south america
We’ll see if miro wants some too so lynn’s two-toed sloths are found usually throughout central america into the very northern portion of south america and we’ll see if we can get in a little closer and maybe see them up close as they’re eating some of their food um so this species of sloth lends to toad sloths they are not an endangered species they’re what’s
Considered a species of least concern um however that does not mean that their populations are always stable uh sloths are found primarily in the rain forests of central and south america and those areas are unfortunately seeing a lot of habitat destruction and fragmentation of habitats so even though the lens two-toed sloth population is doing pretty well their
Habitat needs some help so some things that we can do right at home even though we’re not living in central or south america at least i’m not i’m up here in massachusetts but there are still some things that we can do to help sloths one thing is by participating in something called called meatless mondays a lot of cattle farming happens in south america and that
Is unfortunately reducing the amount of habitat for animals just like sloths so by eating meat one less day a week and decreasing the amount of beef in our diet we’re actually helping sloths and lots of other animals that share the same habitat as them we call sloths an umbrella species when they are protected and their habitat is protected it’s protecting the
Habitat of many other animals as well we’ll see it looks like this sloth cake is a big hit today little taco wants some too you’ll see that i’m feeding taco pieces that are a little bit smaller just because she’s a little bit smaller and taco is our fifth sloth born to nero and lunesta here at the zoo so since we’re kind of focusing on the birthday girl i thought
It would be interesting to talk about her history and how she came to live at the stone zoo so lunesta was actually born at a different zoo she was born at the biodome in montreal and she came here when she was just a few years old and she was paired with nero our male sloth and they then had five offspring see if any more of this cake is appealing to them and
Have we had any questions come in about sloths why do they why do they move so slowly that is a really great question sloths do everything pretty slowly they have a very slow rate of digestion and digestion of food is how animals get their energy we need to digest that food to get the energy out of it it can take sloths up to one month to digest the food in their
Bodies so that definitely aids in why they’re so slow another reason is because of their body temperature sloths have the lowest and most variable body temperature of all mammals on a daily basis the temperature of their body can fluctuate between 70 and 90 degrees so even though they’re mammals and they’re covered in fur they behave a little bit more like reptiles
If you’ve ever seen if you’ve taken a walk outside and maybe seen turtles basking on a log on a warm day they’re warming up the temperature of their own body and sloths will need to bask as well so sometimes if you come to the stone zoo you might not see the sloths at first glance that’s because we have a skylight in this exhibit and they love to go up to the
Skylight and to sun themselves to help speed up digestion so they can start digesting all that tasty food that they’re eating do we have any other questions that have come in one of my favorite facts about sloths is talking about the other animals that sloths are related to so this might be a good trivia for those at home um so if you have any guesses of what
Family of animals sloths belong to or who their closest relatives are i’ll give you a couple seconds to get those guesses in even if you’re not watching live you can take this time to guess and see if you have any ideas if you’re looking for hints a lot of people will guess sometimes monkeys or bears or koalas we’ll give everybody a few seconds as they enjoy
Their food and it looks like lunesta does enjoy the lavender which was really cool to see so if you’ve taken that time to get your guesses in i’m going to reveal the answer now sloth’s closest living relatives are ant eaters and armadillos so they are in a group all of their own but those are their closest living relatives around 50 000 years ago there did used
To be many other species of sloths including giant sloths that lived throughout north and south america they were ground dwelling sloths and they were around the size of elephants which is really really amazing to think about well i think we are just about all out of time for today i want to thank you all so so much for tuning in to help us celebrate lunesta’s 18th
Birthday make sure to come by the zoo and wish her a happy birthday in person thank you bye
Transcribed from video
Zoo to You: Happy Birthday, Lunesta sloth! By Zoo New England