- The apparent docility and friendliness of “smiling” sloths have made them tourist darlings, but have also put a target on their backs.
- The rise in trafficking of these animals led the governments of Brazil, Costa Rica and Panama to propose stricter rules for the international trade of two sloth species; the goal is to prevent them from becoming threatened with extinction.
- Cruel practices used by traders condemn most animals to death, with sloth babies separated from their mothers and subjected to unbearable levels of stress.
- In the Brazilian Amazon, tourism companies encourage customers to take photos with sloths, and the government fears the smuggling of animals to neighboring countries.
It’s not easy to find a sloth in the middle of the forest. They spend most of their time in the tree canopy and are masters of camouflage, thanks to their slow movements and the algae attached to their fur, which makes them blend in with the color of the leaves. Once identified high up, however, these animals become easy prey. Hunters cut down the tree, and within seconds, the animal is on the ground. In their eagerness to defend their young, mothers often are killed by the hunters. The young animals have their claws and sometimes even their fingertips cut off before becoming tourist attractions or exotic “pets.”
The exploitation of sloths by the tourism industry has intensified in recent decades, perhaps due to their peaceful appearance and the impression that they are always smiling, which has earned them the nickname Miss Congeniality of the Amazon. Many travelers crossing South American countries want to take photos next to them, and some even decide to take a baby sloth home, fueling a wildlife trade that’s as lucrative as it’s cruel.
“That ‘smile’ hides immense suffering,” says biologist Neil D’Cruze, strategic research leader at Canopy, an international environmental advocacy organization. “These animals undergo extreme stress when they are handled, confined or exposed to noisy crowds. They are not physiologically suited for this type of treatment,” says the researcher, who conducted studies in South America on the exploitation of these animals.
Few babies resist such stress. In the case of smaller young animals, the mortality rate reaches 99%, according to Tinka Plese, who has worked on the recovery of sloths in Medellín, Colombia, since 1996. “The babies arrive hungry, thirsty, with an impressive sadness,” says Tinka, founder and director of the Aiunau Foundation, which also works with the reintroduction of anteaters and armadillos into nature. “They arrive crying, looking for their mother. They completely refuse to receive anything from humans.”
Deforestation and burning have always been the main threat to sloths. In recent years, however, animal trafficking to supply the tourism industry has added an extra layer of risk. The so-called “wildlife tourism” provides travelers with direct contact with wild animals, whether in popular markets or on itineraries offered by travel agencies.
In an article published in 2018, D’Cruze and other researchers identified 249 tourist attractions of this type in Latin America being advertised on the Tripadvisor travel platform. In some of these locations, tourists can also buy an animal to take home, as is the case at the Belén Market, in Iquitos, Peru.
According to D’Cruze, it’s estimated that tens of thousands of sloths are victims of this illegal trade. “This type of trade has been documented in Colombia, Brazil and Peru,” he states. “And it doesn’t stop there: Sloths are being exported, albeit in smaller numbers, to the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”
The red flag led Brazil, Costa Rica and Panama to suggest the inclusion of two species of the animal in CITES Appendix II (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), an international agreement that establishes controls for the trade of animals and plants. The proposal will be discussed at the group’s next summit, between Nov. 24 and Dec. 5, in Azerbaijan.
The chosen species were Choloepus didactylus, known as Linné’s two-toad sloth, native to the Amazon, and C. hoffmanni, called Hoffmann’s two-toed sloth. Despite being classified as animals of “least concern” globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, governments argue that the situation is already much more critical in countries like Costa Rica, Brazil and Honduras.
“C. hoffmanni meets the criteria for inclusion in CITES Appendix II, and its international regulation is necessary to prevent illegal trafficking from increasing and its populations from declining,” states the document submitted to the convention. According to the proposal, C. didactylus is a species practically identical to C. hoffmanni and is traded in the various countries it inhabits and must therefore be included as a similar species.
“We received the news of the proposal to include Choloepus on the CITES list, led by Brazil, with great enthusiasm,” biologist Nádia de Moraes-Barros, who has studied sloths since the late 1990s and is the scientific coordinator for Freeland Brasil, an NGO that fights wildlife trafficking, tells Mongabay. “In recent years, we have seen an increase in interest in these two species in both legalized and illegal trade, with large numbers being seized, especially in the Amazon region,” says the researcher, who is also vice leader of the Anteater, Sloth and Armadillo Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), responsible for producing the Red List.
The two sloth species nominated for CITES are the two-toed type, known to be more aggressive and faster than their three-toed relatives, and live in Amazonian countries and parts of Central America. In total, there are seven sloth species distributed between South and Central America, with six of them present in Brazil.
The cruelty behind the selfies
The use of animals as tourist attractions and their sale as mascots are particularly widespread in Colombia. According to a National Geographic report, it’s common to find people selling baby sloths for up to 1,110 reais ($200) along Route 25, the highway connecting Medellín to the department of Córdoba.
For D’Cruze, the combination of a large influx of tourists, lack of enforcement, the advance of roads into forest areas and the actions of criminal groups has made the country a hotspot for sloth trafficking. “It’s a modern market response to tourist expectations and social media trends, further facilitated by legal loopholes and limited oversight,” he says. “Colombia’s incredible biodiversity, of which sloths are an important part, is one of its greatest assets, but it’s also being commodified.”
Plese, from the Aiunau Foundation, reports that her team has received up to 120 rescued sloths per year. She states that trafficking decreased with the rise in public awareness campaigns and the arrest in 2015 of animal trafficker Isaac Miguel Bedoya Guevara. According to Colombian authorities, he captured about 10,000 sloths over three decades, and the animals were smuggled to Panama, Costa Rica, the United States and Italy.
“I would say that sloth trafficking has decreased significantly,” Plese says. “However, at the local level, such as on the Caribbean coast, they still offer the animals in market squares and bus stations.” To make matters worse, deforestation has become an increasing threat to the survival of these animals in the Colombian Amazon. “That factor alone would be more than enough to consider the status change [on the IUCN Red List] and to include it in CITES.”
Sloths are also common tourist attractions in popular markets in Peru. In 2019, D’Cruze and his colleagues interviewed traders in Iquitos, who confirmed that the animals are among the top 10 most profitable to be sold as pets. “A significant positive correlation was found between the most profitable species and those that are becoming increasingly rare,” the scientists stated.
Experts have also recorded the illegal trafficking of sloths in Panama, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, Mexico and Costa Rica. Costa Rica, a country that has the animal as its national symbol and launched the Stop Animal Selfies campaign. The initiative aims to raise tourist awareness about the negative impact of selfies and photos that show direct contact with wild animals. According to the campaign, taking selfies with the animals is cruel, negatively impacts species conservation and can be dangerous for tourists, who risk bites, attacks, scratches and disease contagion.
In Brazil, where the C.hoffmanni population has dropped by 28% in the last three generations (42 years), the main threat is deforestation, which directly impacts its habitat. “All sloths are forest dependent,” Barros says. “They are herbivores, mostly three-toed sloths. Two-toed sloths may also occasionally feed on fruits, small invertebrates and sometimes eggs.”
Between 2020 and 2025, the Brazilian environmental agency’s Wild Animal Screening Centers (CETAS), responsible for the rehabilitation of wild animals, received 111 Linné’s two-toed sloths. The animals were either surrendered voluntarily or recovered during operations by environmental agents.
The capture of sloths for contact with tourists is also a reality in the Brazilian Amazon, as shown by a study published by D’Cruze in 2017, after his team monitored a series of tours promoted by tourism agencies near Manaus, in Amazonas state. Interaction with river dolphins was the No.1 attraction, followed by the opportunity to handle sloths. “I saw sloths tied to trees and left huddled on the ground, waiting to be picked up as props when tourists arrived,” the biologist reports.
Another concern is the capture of species in the Brazilian Amazon to be sold in neighboring countries. “In Brazil, there is illegal trafficking of wild species on the border with Peru and Colombia, including sloths,” the proposal made to CITES states.
In addition to illegal trade, sloths can be legally sold in some countries, such as Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, whether for commercial or educational purposes or for exhibition in zoos. This is not the case in Brazil, where the sale of wild species is prohibited. According to Barros, however, the permission for trade in other countries ends up encouraging captures even in territories where the practice is banned. “Let’s say someone illegally removes a sloth from the wild here in Brazil and manages to leave the country. As soon as it leaves, and the species is not listed in any CITES appendix, the sale can become legal in the country it enters.”
If accepted into CITES Appendix II, all signatory countries to the convention will be subject to stricter rules for the trade of the two sloth species. One requirement, for example, is that the country’s environmental agency issues a study proving that the transaction will not affect the species’ conservation.
“Inclusion in CITES Appendix II is a crucial first step. It will highlight the issue and force countries to better regulate international trade,” D’Cruze states. “But this means little if there are no more forests. We need not only to stop sloths from being unsustainably removed from the wild but also to stop nature from being destroyed.”
Banner image: Sloths are displayed to tourists in countries like Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Image courtesy of World Animal Protection/Nando Machado.
Citations:
D’Cruze, N., Niehaus, C., Balaskas, M., Vieto, R., Carder, G., Richardson, V. A., … Macdonald, D. W. (2018). Wildlife tourism in Latin America: Taxonomy and conservation status. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(9), 1562-1576. doi:10.1080/09669582.2018.1484752
D’Cruze, N., Machado, F. C., Matthews, N., Balaskas, M., Carder, G., Richardson, V., & Vieto, R. (2017). A review of wildlife ecotourism in Manaus, Brazil. Nature Conservation, 22, 1-16. doi:10.3897/natureconservation.22.17369
Elwin, A., E., P., Vieto, R., Asfaw, A. E., & Harrington, L. A. (2024). Wildlife trade at Belén and Modelo market, Peru: Defining a baseline for conservation monitoring. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 5, 1464332. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2024.1464332
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