On Sundays, we take it a little bit slower, just like these guys! Consider this your Sunday pick-me-up: meet these new sloth arrivals at the Toucan Rescue Ranch in Costa Rica.
As you probably already know, it is not the best news when we receive new sloths. A new arrival usually means that something happened — either electrocution or an accident. Regardless of the situation, we want to save the lives of as many wild animals as possible and give them another chance so they can grow strong again and, eventually, go back into the trees!
MEET MALAKAI
This is Malakai, named by our Animal Husbandry intern, Brooke, who is originally from Australia!
Malakai arrived at the beginning of June of this year and needed to have emergency surgery as soon as possible. We believe she was in an electrocution accident and wasn’t found by anyone, and so, her wound remained exposed and eventually became necrotic.
We performed surgery to amputate the arm due to the rest of the tissue being exposed and dead, therefore unsavable. Thankfully, everything went well and now she is going through our rehabilitation program! It will entail a lot of exercise, nutritious smoothies, and treatment, and we hope she makes a full recovery! She is very wild and aggressive, which makes us hopeful that she will be able to return #backinthetrees in a few months
MEET CONNOR
We would like to introduce you all to Connor. He arrived at the end of May, and his story is a huge mystery. Our veterinarians actually say his case is nothing like we’ve ever seen in our 17 years of operating.
To this day, we still don’t have a hypothesis as to what happened to Connor. Upon arrival, we noticed he had a huge chunk of his arm missing – but we don’t know what could have caused it, because it looks completely different from anything we’ve seen before.
Regardless, we want his wound to close correctly so he doesn’t suffer from any side effects later on in life. To do this, we are using a regenerative skin treatment using tilapia skin. The fish skin has high levels of collagen which allows it to stay moist longer so it does not need to be changed as frequently as a normal bandage. It is applied directly to the wound which covers the entire injured area. Another benefit of this treatment is the tilapia skin is a natural anti-inflammatory, so when placed on wounds it helps speed healing!
We hope his wound will heal completely so he can be rewilded soon!
Mariana Diaz, born and raised in Costa Rica, has been part of the Marketing Team at Toucan Rescue Ranch since late 2020. With a background in Media for Development and Social Change, Social Work, and Graphic Design, she supports communications and all things media!
This article was produced by the Toucan Rescue Ranch, which specializes in helping wild animals recover so that they can be reintroduced into the wild. For more information or to donate, visit the Toucan Rescue Ranch website.
