Since receiving her first sloth, whom she named 'Buttercup,' in 1992, she has cared for around 1,000 animals. bodily ecosystem.'Īvey, who established the sanctuary with her late Costa Rican husband, Luis Arroyo, had never even heard of a sloth back home in Alaska.

So that tells us there's something going on in their. 'I think maybe in the 30 years (we've been open), we've seen five animals that have come in with an infected injury.

'We've received sloths that had been burned by power lines and their entire arm is just destroyed. 'We've never received a sloth that has been sick, that has a disease or has an illness,' she told AFP. She treats and rehabilitates the creatures with a view to releasing them back into the wild. They live in the canopies of trees in the jungle on the Caribbean coast, where the climate is hot and humid.Īmerican Judy Avey runs a sanctuary in the balmy jungle to care for sloths injured after coming into contact with humans or other animals. The sloth is a national symbol in laid-back Costa Rica and a major tourist attraction for the Central American country.īoth the two-toed (Choloepus Hoffmanni) and three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) sloth species have seen their populations decline, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. or inhibit other competitors' such as fungi, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Microbiology. They found the possible existence of antibiotic-producing bacteria that 'makes it possible to control the proliferation of potentially pathogenic bacteria.

'Obviously when there is co-existence of many types of organisms, there must also be systems that control them,' he said.Ĭhavarria and a team took fur samples from Costa Rican two- and three-toed sloths to examine what that control system could be. a very extensive habitat,' Max Chavarria, a researcher at the University of Costa Rica, told AFP. 'If you look at the sloth's fur, you see movement: you see moths, you see different types of insects.

Slowly slowly slowly said the sloth