As Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce draw global attention around a reported wedding celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York, Costa Rica’s role in the story is not a secret honeymoon, a private estate or a surprise beach visit. It is two baby sloths in Manuel Antonio.
There is no confirmed public record of Swift and Kelce visiting Costa Rica together. Their clearest Costa Rica tie appears to be a lighthearted wildlife rescue story from The Sloth Institute, a Manuel Antonio nonprofit that named two orphaned sloths Taylor and Travis after the celebrity couple.
The first, a baby two-fingered sloth named Taylor, was rescued on November 18, 2025, after hotel staff in Manuel Antonio found her clinging to an older three-fingered sloth. The pairing was unusual because two-fingered and three-fingered sloths are different species. With no mother nearby, and the baby too young to survive alone, the organization took her into care.
Taylor needed round-the-clock feeding and close monitoring before she slowly began eating solid food and fresh leaves. The institute said she was gaining weight and reaching key early milestones during rehabilitation.
For orphaned baby sloths, companionship can be part of that process. Young sloths would normally spend that stage of life with their mothers, so wildlife rehabilitators often pair them with other young sloths for comfort and social development.
Taylor soon had company. Within weeks, two more juvenile sloths arrived at the institute: Travis, named after Kelce, and Opi, short for Opalite. The three became part of the organization’s Sloth School, a rehabilitation program that helps orphaned sloths learn how to find leaves, move through the canopy, recognize predators and eventually function in the wild.
The institute later shared video of Taylor meeting Travis, playing into the Swift-Kelce romance with a joke that the encounter looked like “love at first sight.” The names and timing helped the small Costa Rica rescue story travel far beyond Manuel Antonio, bringing new attention to sloth conservation.
That extra attention matters. The institute’s goal is not to keep the animals as attractions, but to prepare them for release once they are ready. For Taylor, Travis and Opi, the long-term plan is rewilding, meaning a return to the forest if their health and behavior allow it.
The story also connects to a much more serious animal-welfare fight. The Sloth Institute and The Sloth Conservation Foundation have used the added visibility to argue against private sloth ownership and commercial handling in the United States. The issue gained traction this year after dozens of sloths imported for a planned Orlando attraction died in transit or after arriving in Florida.
Florida wildlife officials temporarily halted sloth imports in May following the Sloth World Orlando case. The pause was set to remain in place through July 10, after which sloth imports were expected to resume under a new permitting requirement, rather than Florida’s broader blanket import permit system.
For Costa Rica, the celebrity angle is secondary to the conservation message. Sloths remain one of our most recognizable animals, but rescue groups regularly warn that their popularity can work against them when it fuels handling, roadside photo stops, illegal pet ownership or commercial displays.
So while New York is focused on Swift and Kelce’s reported wedding celebration, their Costa Rican namesakes remain far from the cameras in Manuel Antonio, learning the basics of forest life one leaf at a time.
