Zookeepers are waiting for a DNA test to learn whether a baby sloth born in Hattiesburg Zoo, Mississippi, is a boy or a girl. That is because sloths’ sex organs are internal.
They will have to send a bit of fur to a larger zoo to learn the gender of the Hoffman’s Two-toed Sloth born to Mo and Chewy, the zoo’s curator of mammals Stephen Taylor said on Friday.
Mama Mo, hanging upside-down with the baby resting on her belly, was on public view on Friday for the first time since giving birth on Feb. 5.
Photo: AP
The first days after birth are delicate for any animal, and Taylor said this one did not start suckling on its own.
After about half a day, zookeepers began feeding it puppy milk replacement from a syringe fitted with a nipple instead of a needle, he said.
“We’re still hoping it’ll pick it up once it gets more coordinated and mobile,” he said during a telephone interview with reporters.
Not that sloths, native to Central and South America, are wildly active at any time.
They were named for their inaction, an adaptation to their low-nutrition diet of leaves.
The baby’s are even slower than adults — and clumsy, Taylor said.
“It just sits on mom’s tummy right now,” he said.
About every two hours, a zookeeper disengages the baby to feed it. Starting on Friday, those feedings moved from behind the scenes to the sloths’ viewing window.
Since it was a workday, there was not much of a crowd.
“I imagine tomorrow [yesterday] is going to be pretty nuts,” Taylor said.
Because of the baby, Mo has not been part of the twice-weekly “sloth experiences,” which let visitors pay extra to mix up sloth food and even hold Chewy, who used to be a pet, on their laps.
It is likely to be “quite a few months” before she and the baby return to the sloth experience room, Taylor said.
Although sloths are born with a full coat of fur, their eyes open, and a full complement of teeth and long claws, they are dependent on their mothers for about a year, the zoo said.
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