You’re standing in the middle of the mall paying for a ridiculously expensive over-sized cookie (that will probably ruin your kiddo’s dinner) when your toddler makes a break for it. Try as you might, wrangling your racing tot just isn’t happening. So what do you do? Along with freaking out, you probably listen for that tell-tale, “Mommmmmmmy!!!!!!” Well, a National Geographic video of a baby sloth reuniting with its mother is kind of a similar scene—but in the animal kingdom, and not the local mall/Target/grocery store/anywhere else your child likes to make a run for it.
When tourists found a baby brown-throated three-toed sloth on a beach in Costa Rica they didn’t just leave the sand and ant-covered little ball of adorableness alone. They brought the sloth to the nonprofit Jaguar Rescue Center, where vets checked it out. Even though the baby was healthy, it needed its mother. And that’s where the Center’s founder, and resident biologist, Encar Garcia stepped in.
Garcia recorded the baby sloth’s cry on her smartphone. The biologist and her team took the recording, via portable speakers, into the wild to play. As the team played the baby’s vocalizations, they saw an adult sloth coming out of the trees. Garcia, along with veterinarian Fernando Alegre, brought the baby to the adult sloth.
What horned next? The female sloth recognized the baby (most likely by scent) and accepted the little sloth back. Oh, and then some seriously cute can’t-miss nuzzling took place between the reunited pair!
—Erica Loop
Featured Photo: Mathias Appel via Flickr
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