Mother Amaka and her young are doing well. “The little sloth quietly discovers the new environment from the mother's belly,” says Christel. Sloths are born upside down, the young then climbs directly onto the mother's belly. “In a few months, the sloth will explore on its own and learn to hang independently,” explains Christel. “Only then do we know whether the young is a male or a female.” You can't tell the sex of sloths from the outside. “If the young go out on their own in a few months, we can take a hair and send it for DNA testing to find out the sex.”

The little one was born in the nocturnal animal enclosure in Amersfoort Zoo, where various nocturnal animals live together. “The inhabitants of the Night have at least one thing in common: they are active in the dark and sleep when it is light. So their biorhythm is the opposite of ours. In the nocturnal animal house, it is light at night and dark during the day, so you can see the sloths , night monkeys and marsupials together actively,” explains the zookeeper. The sloth cub can be admired on the mother's belly in the Night in DierenPark Amersfoort.