Stuck for Stuff to Do this Summer? Don’t be Lazy; Be a Sloth!

Sloths are our planet’s slowest-moving mammals. And now, they’ve eventually made it to Nanjing. If you’ve never seen one of these (kind of) lovable beasts, now is your chance. Just don’t hang around; they might be off in the blink of an eye.

Yesterday, 5 July, many local citizens flocked to Nanjing Underwater World for an up-close-and-personal look at a real-life sloth. Two in fact. Therein, the mysteries of the mammal are revealed by the enigmatic host of “Sloth Story”.

This summer holiday, the Underwater attraction welcomed two sloths; a For this summer holiday, the Underwater attraction (go figure) has welcomed the sloths; a 14-year-old female and her 1-and-a-half-year old offspring, named “Lazy Lazy” (懒懒).

It’s more than an appropriate moniker. For the sloth has acquired a descriptive name in Chinese; 树懒 (shulan) meaning “lazy tree”.

In order to welcome the pair, Nanjing Underwater World made complete preparations. Native to the tropical rainforests of South America and Central America, sloths enjoy both high temperatures and humidity.

As such, a special ventilation system was installed in the sloths’ enclosure, controlling the temperature to 27-30 degrees Celsius and the ambient humidity to around 60 percent, by means of a humidifier. Nanjing’s sloths, as a result, feel right at home.

According to the Yangtze Evening News, sloths are so-slow moving that even when their lives are in danger, they can only manage to accelerate to 0.2 metres per second.

Sometimes, sloths are even too lazy to eat, meaning they can endure hunger for more than a month.

For the duration of this summer holiday, the two sloths are waiting for you in the “Sloth Lodge” on 4F of Nanjing Underwater World. Also on show there these days are a large-scale, interactive performance of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, as well as a dolphin and sea-lion theatre performance, plus the-now ubiquitous mermaid performance. 

Nanjing Underwater World is located at 8 Sifangcheng (四方城8号), near to Mingxiaoling, on Purple Mountain; Telephone: 84441119.