Scared, But Cute Little Sloth Saved By Ecuador Police Officers After Treacherous Highway Crossing

A tiny and very scared sloth suddenly found himself world-famous over the weekend after what must have been a terrifying trek across a busy highway in Los Rios Province, Ecuador, and being rescued by kind-hearted police officers from the Ecuador Transit Commission who spotted the furry little guy clinging for dear life to a metal post on the thoroughfare’s guard rail.

Sloths are native to Central and South America, but how this particular, undersized animal found his way out of the trees where sloths make their natural habitat and into the frightening roadway traffic is not entirely clear. All the transit officers know is that the sloth was there, and very frightened.

Even the permanent “smile” on the little critter’s face couldn’t hide the fact that he was practically helpless.

The Friday afternoon adventure ended up with the sloth receiving media coverage as far away as New Zealand, as well as in the United Kingdom and in numerous outlets across the United States, including ABC News.

The Ecuador Transit Commission revealed the remarkable and adorable story on its own Facebook page, and it went viral from there.

“En Los Ríos colaboramos con un hermoso perezoso, que pretendía cruzar el anillo vial de Quevedo,” the Ecuador Transit Police wrote. According to Facebook, the message translates to, “In Rivers we collaborate with a beautiful lazy, which aimed to cross the ring vial of Quevedo.”

That translation may not be entirely accurate, but it gets the point across.

Quevedo is a city of more than 170,000 population in Los Rios Province.

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“We want to let you know the sloth was rescued and taken by our officers to a veterinarian, who said the sloth was in good condition to be returned to its habitat,” the Ecuador Transit authorities wrote on the Facebook page.

“We are grateful to all those people who were interested in the health of the animal,” the transit cops continued. “We will continue to support these kinda of cases, along with the collaboration of the citizenship. Greetings to all.”

The following video tells the story of the scared sloth, complete with more photos from the Ecuador Transit Commission Facebook page.

BuzzFeed news reporters even reached out to the transit authorities in Ecuador to get a few more details, learning that the slow-moving little fellow was “struggling to cross” the busy street when he was discovered by the transit officers — which is not surprising because cars move fast and sloths move very slow.

In fact, sloths — which are closely related to armadillos and anteaters, according to the site Slothville.com — are among the slowest mammals nature has to offer. Even though their name, “sloth,” has become synonymous with laziness and is one of the “seven deadly sins,” the sloth’s apparent reluctance to do much of anything is not just slacking.

The sloth diet, Slothville says, consists of mostly toxic leaves that must be digested extremely slowly in the multi-chamber stomach of the sloth. Digesting a single leaf can take as long a whole month.

As a result, perhaps not surprisingly, sloths have very little energy, and spend about 70 percent of their lives just hanging around in trees, resting or asleep. When they do decide to get up and move, they have a very hard time working up much of a head of steam.

They mostly keep to the trees, because their claw-like toes make walking rather awkward, slowing them down even more.

Somehow the little guy in the photos from the Ecuador Transit Commission made the journey. Fortunately, these compassionate officers showed up to save the frightened little sloth.

[All photos by Ecuador Transit Commission]