Friday, December 11, 2009

Sloth

Last Saturday I received a busload of passengers from a cruise ship moored in Alter do Chão, some 33 kilometers from Santarém. As the bus came to a halt at the entrance to the Bosque, I heard the sounds of a guide speaking over a load speaker system, but at a higher pitch than normal. Suddenly, Nelis, the English speaking guide, jumped off the bus with his 16 passengers and they all headed across the road, a route never taken on our tours. From a distance I saw everyone looking up into the trees. "Hum, monkeys", I thought. As it turned out, Nelis had spotted a sloth, right from the bus. Some of the woodsmen took the animal from the tree and brought it over to the reception center, as seen in the image. A beautiful sloth. Look at those nails!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great photo!.

He/She is a large one. Amazon bred and fed I suppose. Saw one years ago in my Peace Corps town in Espirito Santo. Locals weren't too caring of the poor thing. Almost got into a fight telling the local to back off from tormenting the poor creature.

ExpatBrazil

small houses said...

I always thought monkeys are sloths and sloths are monkeys! Pretty hard to identify which is which.