Your next outing to Nashville Zoo with the kids will be more entertaining with the addition of a couple new animals to the zoo’s family.
A couple of two-toed sloths are now part of the zoo’s collection, and they’re a mother and baby combo! Mama sloth Edith and her son, Emmett, are on exhibit in the Aviary inside the Unseen New World area.
“We’re happy to add this mom and youngster duo to the Unseen New World Aviary,” says Joe deGraauw, avian curator at Nashville Zoo. “The temperature and humidity requirements for this species makes them a perfect fit in the Aviary which also offers a naturalistic canopy and vine thoroughfare where visitors can easily observe the sloths. They will represent a mammal species in the Aviary that already supports more than 20 birds and reptiles,” he adds.
FUN FACTS ABOUT TWO-TOED SLOTHS:
• They are known as the world’s slowest mammal.
• They spend most of their lives in the treetops of Central and South America.
• They thrive in humid, warm and well-established tropical and cloud forests.
• While all sloths have three claws on their hind limbs, two-toed sloths are distinguished from the three-toed sloth by the number of fingers on their hands.
• Two-toed sloths’ elongated limbs, long claws and reinforced lumbar vertebrae are adaptations making their upside-down hanging lifestyle easy for them.
• Their diet consists of leaves, shoot and fruit from trees, and they get almost all their water from juicy plants.
Nashville Zoo is located at 3777 Nolensville Road, Nashville. It’s open daily from 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Admission is $16 adults, $11 ages 2 – 12, free ages 1 and younger. Call 615-833-1534 or visit nashvillezoo.org.
