Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

Having made the poor animal feel self-conscious about its legs and arms, Oviedo then goes on to say that it lives on air. One can only presume that he did not try to feed the one that he kept in his house, or else that he offered it the wrong things, for sloths as a rule have quite a hearty appetite. He then dismisses the whole sloth population on the grounds that because they are of no use to man they are no use at all. The belief that all animals were placed on earth purely for man's convenience was, of course, usual in Oviedo's time, and still lingers on today. There are still many arrogant bipeds who believe that an animal should be exterminated as quickly as possible if it is of no direct use to mankind as a whole, and themselves in particular.

The great Buffon launched a description of the sloth in his Natural History, and it was even worse than Oviedo's.

According to him sloths were nothing more nor less than a gigantic error on the part of nature; the sloth was without weapons of offence or defence, it was slow, in constant pain and extremely stupid. All these are the results, he says, of the "strange and bungling conformation of creatures to whom nature has been unkind, and who exhibit to us the picture of innate misery."

Shortly after our night fight with the two-toed sloth we procured a specimen of the second species of sloth found in Guiana , the three-toed sloth. The two animals were so totally different in appearance that at first sight they did not appear to be related at all. They were about the same size, but the three-toed had a remarkably small, rounded head with tiny eyes, nose, and mouth in comparison to its body.

Instead of the sparse, shaggy brown fur of the two-toed, this sloth was clad in a coat of thick ash-grey hair which was of a curious texture, like dry moss. On its legs this hair was so thick that it made them look twice as strong as the two-toed's legs, whereas in reality they were much weaker. On its back, lying across the shoulder blades, was an area of dark hair shaped like a figure of eight.

Having both these species together gave me an ideal opportunity to compare their habits, and I found that they differed as much in these as in their appearance. The two toed, for example, would sleep hanging beneath a branch, in the proper sloth manner, its head tucked between its forelegs and resting on its chest; the three-toed preferred to find a forked branch, and it would then fit itself into the fork, clinging to one branch with its feet and resting its back against the other. The two-toed, as I have described, was more or less helpless on the ground, but the three-toed, on the other hand, could hoist itself up on to its legs and crawl about, walking with the massive claws turned in and the legs bent, looking like a very old man suffering from acute rheumatism. Its progress was slow and quivering, it is true, but it could get from one place to another. Up in the trees, however, the situation was reversed, the two-toed being quick and agile, whereas the three-toed was slow and hesitant, and tested each new branch carefully before trusting its weight to it. As it had demonstrated on the night of its escape, the two-toed had a savage and untrustworthy nature, whereas its relation could be handled with complete safety, even when freshly caught.

Finding the three-toed so tame I removed it from its cage the day after its arrival to examine it for a phenomenon which I very much wanted to study at first hand. Bob, finding me with the animal in my lap, assiduously searching its fur, not unnaturally wanted to know what I was doing.

When I told him quite truthfully that I was looking for vegetation he refused to believe me. I explained at great length that I was not joking, but it was only long afterwards when we had another sloth brought in that I could convince him of the truth of my explanation. The hair of a sloth has a fluted or roughened surface, upon which nourishes a vegetable a form of algae that gives the hair a distinctly green tinge. It is the same type of plant that one sees growing on rotten fences in England , and, of course, in the warm, damp atmosphere of the tropics it grows luxuriantly on the sloth's fur and gives him a wonderful protective colouring.

This association between a vegetable and a mammal is quite unique.

I found that the bad-tempered two-toed sloth was the easier to keep in captivity, for it lived quite happily on a diet of pawpaw, banana, sliced mango, as well as several varieties of leaves, including the ever-present hibiscus.

But the three-toed would only feed on one kind of leaf and stubbornly refused all others, so that feeding was quite a problem. Being very primitive creatures sloths are able to go for long periods without food if they want to; the record appears to belong to a three toed specimen in a zoo that once fasted for a month without any ill-effects. They can also survive injuries which would prove fatal in any other animal, and can even take large doses of poison without apparently suffering any harm. This ability to survive injuries, as well as their slow and deliberate movements, makes them strangely reptilian creatures.

Oviedo , in his discourse on sloths, makes the following statement regarding their cries: Their voice is much differing from other beasts, for they sing onely in the night, and that continually from time to time, singing ever sixe notes one higher than another, so falling with the same, that the first note is the highest, and the other in a baser tune, as if a man should say. La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Ut, so this beast saith, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha… even so the first invention of musicke might see me by the hearing of this beast, to have the first principles of that science, rather than by any other thing in the world.

Now I can say nothing regarding the operatic achievements of Oviedo's sloths, but I know that my specimens did not make any noise that tallied with his description. I spent many long hours in my hammock at night, refraining from sleep, in the hopes that they would start practising scales, but they were as silent as giraffes. The two-toed made the loud hissing noise already referred to when it was annoyed, and the three-toed made a similar, though fainter, sound, supplementing it occasionally with a dull moaning grunt, as though it was in agony. Judging from these sounds alone I would hesitate to conjecture with Oviedo that the art of music was derived from the song of the sloth.

In my absorption with the Bradypodidae family I had completely forgotten about the moonshine uwarie. When Bob reminded me that in three days we were due to return to Georgetown to deposit our cargo, I suddenly realized that it might be my last chance of getting one of these opossums, so I hastily raised its market price once again and dashed up and down the main street of Adventure interviewing anyone who seemed to have any sort of hunting qualifications, imploring them to get me a moonshine uwarie. But when the day of our departure arrived no one had brought me a specimen, and I was sunk in the deepest gloom.

To get our collection down to the steamer jetty we had hired a massive, elongated cart drawn by a dejected-looking horse.

It drew up in the road outside our hut, and Bob and I proceeded to load it up with our cages of creatures. There were boxes full of teguxins and iguanas, small bags full of snakes and sacks full of anacondas, cages of rats and monkeys and sloths, Cuthbert peeting wildly from behind bars, cages of small birds and great tins of fish. Lastly, there was the pungent Didelphys opossums' box. The cart, piled high with this cargo, creaked and rattled off down the road. We had sent Ivan on ahead so that he could arrange a place for the animals on the upper deck of the steamer.

Bob and I walked slowly alongside the cart as it rattled down the white dusty road, dappled with the shadows of the trees that grew alongside. We waved good-bye to the various inhabitants who had come out of their houses in order to wish us a good journey. Presently we passed the last houses of Adventure and started down the long stretch of road that led to the river bank and the jetty. We were half-way to the river when we heard someone shouting in the distance, and turning round I saw a small figure running down the road after us, frantically waving one hand.