Animals in Costa Rica
Costa Rica is home to around 210 species of mammals, half of which are bats. Most mammals are shy and rarely seen by casual visitors.
Sloths (Perezoso)
Costa Rica has two species of sloths: the three-toed sloth, and the smaller, nocturnal two-toed sloth.
The animals spend their days upside down in the treetops, clinging to the branches with their up to 10 cm long nails. To feed on their diet of leaves they can rotate their neck up to an angle of 270 degrees. Each sloth family feeds on an individual selection of trees: a baby sloth inherits from its mother the family's special set of bacterias for digesting its particular mix of tree leaves. Because the leaves provide only few nutrients, the animals have a very low metabolism - the reason for their slow paced lifestyle.
The sloth's greenish, shaggy fur is a biotope in itself, inhabited by bugs and overgrown with algae. Moths, beetles, mites and ticks crawl through the fur, and when the sloth grooms itself, it always gets a little snack of high-fat algae and protein.
Albeit slow, sloths are skilled tree climbers and they are also good swimmers. On the ground, however, they have great difficulty moving forward. Nevertheless, once a week sloths come down from their tree to go to the toilet and duly dig their feces into the ground. It's not clear why they put themselves at such a high risk of predation. Perhaps they want to reward their food trees with fertiliser.
Fortunately for the sloth, it has become one of the few forest mammals whose survival is enhanced by forest degradation. Its predators, the jaguar and the harpye eagle, have almost disappeared from Costa Rica.
The ancestors of the sloths, the giant ground sloth, evolved about 35 million years ago. At around 6 meters long, they were as big as elephants. The sloths' closest relatives, the anteaters, are also descended from the same ancestors.
Anteaters (Tamandua)
In Costa Rica there are three species of anteaters: the most commonly seen is the Collared Anteater, which is a bit bigger than a domestic cat. The cute little Silky Anteater is only 38 cm tall and very hard to spot as it is nocturnal and lives high in the canopy. The third, the Giant Anteater, measures up to two metres (including the tail) and is extremely rare, perhaps even extinct in Costa Rica.
Anteaters are solitary creatures and each individual requires a territory of around 185 acres. The anteater subsists on a diet of ants and termites, but is selective, eating relatively few ants from any given colony and avoiding those with painful stings or bites. It has a long head and a tubular mouth, no larger than a pencil, with no teeth. Its most striking feature is its tongue, which can be up to a metre long and is coated in a sticky saliva. It is used to lick the ants out of their nest at a rate of about 150 laps a minute. The Collared Anteater consumes an estimated 30,000 ants per day.
The front claws, which are used to rip open termite nests and dig in the ground, are so long that they are tucked under and the animal walks on its knuckles. To defend itself, the anteater stands on its hind legs and uses its powerful front claws as weapons. This doesn't always help - many anteaters are killed by dogs every year.
Dog owners shouldn't let their dogs go hunting and kill animals!
Armadillos
The Nine-Banded Armadillo looks rather primitive and is in fact a very unique mammal. Armadillo mothers give birth to between 5 and 10 babies, all of whom are genetically identical because they arise from one single egg. A female can also store a fertilised egg for up to 3 years if her living conditions aren't favourable for pregnancy.
The nearly blind animals have a keen sense of smell, which helps them find food such as ants, beetles, and larvae underneath forest litter and in the ground. On their nocturnal tour they mustn't avoid to make noise - they are well protected against predators by bony plates that cover their bodies.
In Argentina, the fossilised shells of Glyptodonts (the armadillo's anchestors) have been found, which roamed the earth around 20,000 years ago. The largest of the shells was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Deer
The White-tailed Deer is the same species as found in North America, but it is much smaller. To the south its habitat extends until Bolivia. They are not rainforest animals, instead they prefer the open, dry forests. Male deer develop antlers which they change every year. When threatened, the white-tailed deer will stamp its hooves and take off at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. It raises its tail to show the white underside helping her fawns to follow it. In the past, white-tailed deer were almost extinct in Costa Rica when deforestation and hunting greatly decreased their numbers. Today their population has recovered.
Tapirs (Danta)
The largest mammal in Costa Rica is the endangered tapir. It needs large territories to live. Tapirs are very important seed dispersers. There are several native plants in Costa Rica whose seeds only germinate after passing through the tapir's digestive tract.
The strange-looking animal with its long, flexible snout is a distant relative of the elephant. It feeds on leaves, twigs, fruit and seeds. Tapirs have poor eyeshight but they are excellent swimmers and are usually found near water. Their only enemy in the jungle was the jaguar, but a far more dangerous predator - Homo sapiens - has almost driven them to extinction. In Costa Rica they are now only found in remote sections of Corcovado and the Talamanca mountains.