Transit police are used to dealing with all sorts of road-related predicaments, but officers in Ecuador were in for a pretty unusual call-out recently when a sloth got stuck on a busy road in the city of Quevedo.
The furry jaywalker was spotted with its claws wrapped tightly around a crash barrier in the middle of a newly opened highway, with cars speeding past on both sides. Two-toed sloths like this one might be a little more agile than their infamously lethargic three-toed cousins, but this guy still wasn't making it to the other side without a bit of help.
Sadly, with paved roads increasingly winding their way through sloth habitat, collisions with vehicles have become one of the main threats facing these slow-moving animals.
Luckily, this one was safely evacuated, says the Comisión de Tránsito del Ecuador, who posted snaps of the rescue on their Facebook page. The sloth, who's become a bit of a local celebrity, was taken for a check-up at the vet, where it was given the green light to return to the wild – far from any busy roads.
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Top header image: Andres Hernandez S., Flickr
In The Field
Conservation
In The Field
