4:15:13 
2023-08-11 
476
It might be easy to assume that sloths would come second to any predator while on the ground, as they are traditionally known as tree-dwelling and slow-moving animals.
A camera trap in the Amazonian wilderness has provided surprising footage, showing a sloth actually fighting and running away from a predator known as an ocelot.
The dramatic footage was taken from the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Linnaean's sloth (Choloepus didactylus) was visiting a swampy area known as the mineral lick, or saladero, when it was attacked.
These visits can be dangerous, as these videos prove. In the clips below, the sloth fends off the attack of the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) with some quick smart strikes, which made it able to escape relatively quickly.
And as researchers from the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, the University of Texas and Austin in the US, and the University Of San Francisco De Quito in Ecuador point out in an accompanying paper, snapshots taken are very rare.
First, predation attacks are often not caught on camera. Second, sloths usually visit the saladero at night, when it is safer to do so. Third, sloths were not previously considered a target for the ocelot—and it is not clear how the ocelot planned to go about the attack.
The researchers cannot say for certain whether the sloth managed to escape unharmed, due to the limitations of the camera's field of view. However, they returned to the scene two days after shooting the videos, and found no evidence of the sloths being there.
Very few sloth visits to saladero have been recorded — only once in roughly 4,000 nights in the 2011 study — and these clips show the dangers of getting out of the trees where they are away from potential predators. This is especially true when visiting a place that is a land famous for being a feeding ground for many species.
The researchers say the videos are useful in telling us more about both animals: about the habits of sloths and the animals that fish feed on. The ocelot usually eats small creatures, such as snakes, turtles, and frogs, but it has been known that it may attack larger prey as well. It's also a reminder that animals that tend to move slowly and have sluggish metabolisms can still stand up against the more agile creatures in the wild. And we'll have to wait and see if any more dramatic events will be filmed at this location.
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