Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth

A heavily built, shaggy animal that moves with slow, deliberate hand-over-hand motions. The fore feet have only two clawed toes while the hind feet have three. Compared with the three-toed sloth it has a longer snout, no hair on the soles, fewer dark markings around the eyes and a larger body. The fur is tan to light brown, lighter on the face, and often tinged green by algae growing in the hairs. The stubby tail is hidden in the fur (Wikipedia, general species account; Handbook of the Mammals of the World).

This sloth is solitary and mostly nocturnal, active for roughly 11 hours through the night and sleeping the day away in tangles of lianas. Studies on Barro Colorado Island found it almost exclusively nocturnal, which the authors linked partly to competition with the brown-throated sloth. It climbs down every 3–8 days to defecate. Females give birth to a single young and can breed year-round; in agroforest in Costa Rica the mating system mixes polygyny with promiscuity (Wikipedia, general species account; GBIF species profile).

Sloths have a diet low in energy, and the slow movement is an adaptation to it rather than laziness (Wikipedia, general species account). On this guide it is a target species of Tortuguero, Cahuita, Arenal, Manuel Antonio and the Osa Peninsula.