Bradypus variegatus
Drawn from open occurrence records inside Tortuguero, aggregated onto a 10 km grid.
Occurrence records measure where people looked and found something, which is not the same as where the animal is. This is a relative likelihood, not a probability.
Records exist for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December. A quiet month can mean the animal was absent, or that nobody was looking.
The brown-throated three-toed sloth has committed so completely to slowness that its fur hosts an ecosystem: green algae for camouflage, and moths that live nowhere else on Earth, shuttling between the sloth and the dung it descends, once a week, all the way to the forest floor to deposit. That weekly commute is the most dangerous hour of a sloth's life and the least explicable habit in mammalogy; the leading theory involves keeping the moth garden growing. Everything else is economy: leaves for food, a metabolism at half-speed, a body temperature that drifts with the weather, and a face permanently arranged into a smile it did not choose. Costa Rica without a sloth sighting is a trip incomplete.
Solitary, arboreal, nearly silent; moves maybe 40 meters in a day. Swims surprisingly well when rivers interrupt the canopy.
Scan cecropia crowns and ask local guides, who track individuals. Overcast light is kind to the fur; wait for the slow head-turn, because it is the only action coming.
Never touch or hold a sloth and refuse any photo-with-sloth offer; handling stresses them severely and fuels an illegal trade.