Blind Date at the Zoo: Sloth Meets his Soul Mate

Sean waiting for his mate. Photo: Safari Ramat Gan

Sean has been waiting more than three years for this day. After many lonely nights, his keepers at the Ramat Gan Safari have assured him that the wait is finally over and his new soul mate is on her way.

Sean is a 10-year-old sloth that immigrated to Israel from Canada with his former mate Lee. Unfortunately, a couple of months after the relocation, Lee passed away and Sean remained alone.

Seeing his condition, Sean’s keepers at the Safari called the European zoologist in charge of sloth mating (we also didn’t know there was such a thing). Two years later, the phone rang in Ramat Gan with the name of a potential suitor – Lazy, a three-year old sloth from the Krefeld Zoo in Germany.

Hanging till she shows up, Photo: Safari Ramat Gan

Last week after packing up, Lazy got on the Lufthansa flight to Israel to meet her husband. “We have worked a long time to find a mate for Sean that has no genetic or family relations with him, and today we’re really happy that lazy has consented and will be joining us in Israel,” said Dr. Amalya Terkel, the safari’s zoologist. “Now we have to give the couple a chance to get to know each other and hopefully bear offspring.”

The sloth is a mammal residing in the jungles of South and Central America. Most of their lives, sloths hang upside down from the tree tops. Their daily habit includes 15 hours of sleep and not a lot of movement. The sloth eats less than a pound of fruit a day and will digest that food for more than a month.

For those of you interested, in Hebrew a sloth is called azllan — which translates as lazy.

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