Skip to main content Skip to footer site map
Special: Saving The Slowest Mammal on Earth | In Her Nature | Clip

How This Dog is Saving Sloths

SHARE

Sloths are notoriously hard to see and therefore can be hard to help. But one furry creature is at the heart of sloth conservation in Costa Rica: Keysha. See how Keysha can detect sloths (spoiler: it’s poop-related) and what we can learn about sloths to better help them based on what Keysha finds.

TRANSCRIPT

Sloths spend up to 90% of their hanging completely upsid down in the rainforest canopy.

They do everything except poop u So sloths, when they poop, they climb all down from the canopy to the fore and they dig a little hol with their tail.

Sloth poop cont all sorts of pheromones and hidden messages.

We think because sloths are soli creatures, using these communal sloth toil gives them a way to communicate really important information about each other.

There's a lot of valuable information that you can ge from the poop of wild animals.

And an idea I had is to use dogs Dogs are able to smell things that humans cannot.

Ill put this here in this block and she will tell me by barking Okay, vamos.

Busca.

Oh, good.

Yes.

Good girl!

Training a dog to detect the poop of sloths, th us look at parasitology, diet, we can look at cortisol levels in the poop.

From that we can see how stressed sloths a This is also a really great way for us to start monitoring how many sloths live in particul Okay, Keysha, you ready to sniff sloth poop?

- Get your nose ready.

Let's go.

Keyshas first time in the prima Let's see if she can find anythi Vamos, vamos.

(Keysha barking) When she finds poop, what she'll look at Tamara and bark.

As soon as we get some evidence that there is poop there - - Oh, my God, theres loads.

we can then reward Keysha.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes!

Good girl.

- Oh, Keysha, you did it!

- Good girl.

Thats the best poo sample ever.

Good girl.

How am I going to protect sloths With Tamara and a dog.