Should you hug a sloth? Experts say, ‘No’

FOLSOM, California – Cats may be the reigning queens of the internet, but sloths are not far behind.

With a visage that appears to be smiling and a physiological need to cling, the slow-moving mammal, native to Central and South America, has been frequently memed and made into beloved animated characters.

But lately, sloths have been proliferating in real life, far outside their arboreal habitats. They can be fed, cuddled and photographed at animal parks and pet shops, often despite unclear provenance and lax adherence to safety and health rules.

Sloths join big-eared fennec foxes and baby-faced kinkajous as star attractions in the growing range of venues where interactions with animals – the more exotic and up close the better – underpin the business model.

The number of those US Department of Agriculture (USDA)-licensed exhibitors almost doubled from 2019 to 2021, with over 1,000 sloths inspected annually in the last two years.

According to US federal data, the risk of animal deaths and disease outbreaks has increased. So have human injuries – and the concerns of experts and state agencies.

“The desire for proximity – to touch, to feel the immediate presence of animals – is very old,” said Professor Nigel Rothfels, a historian who studies zoos. “Perhaps we are hardwired for it. But the access and demand have increased.”

Whether it is at an iffy roadside stand (think Tiger King) or a well-established institution’s “backstage tour”, the encounters often wind up, by design, on social media. That visibility normalises hugging critters – but many animal experts say it should not.

Research shows that depicting interactions can mislead the public into thinking the animals could be pets, or question whether they are really endangered.

“Put simply, viewing animals in contact with people has the potential to influence negative beliefs about wildlife and conservation,” said Dr Sally Sherwen, the director of wildlife conservation and science at Zoos Victoria, a conservation-oriented network in Australia.

One company that has attracted outsize attention from regulators and animal advocates is SeaQuest, a national chain of interactive aquariums.

It has seven locations, from Folsom, California, to Woodbridge, New Jersey, most of which exhibit sloths. And, for an extra fee, visitors can handle flying squirrels, snorkel with stingrays or cavort with otters and wallabies.

Whether the animals want that kind of communion is another question.

In a video interview, Mr Vince Covino, who founded SeaQuest in Boise, Idaho, in 2015, said that the animals SeaQuest displays enjoy human contact, and that the traditional “look but don’t touch” model was outdated.

“There has been a long-time stigma – don’t touch the animals, don’t feed the animals. Shh, they’re sleeping, they don’t want to interact with human beings,” he said. “I just didn’t buy it.”

But wild animals are not primed for close encounters, say some zoologists and many animal advocates, no matter how cute #slothsoftiktok is.

A Michigan teenager learnt that first-hand when she was bitten by a sloth in 2023 at an exotic pet store that offered weekly interactions.

“There were two puncture wounds and blood running down her arm,” her mother told local media.

Certain animals may enjoy the diversion of human activity, especially in an otherwise controlled environment – like the playful primates in a zoo.

But even then, it depends on the individual creature, said Dr Jenny Gray, chief executive of Zoos Victoria and a former president of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Forcing an animal in an enclosure into a photo opportunity is exploitative, she and other experts said.

When public zoos came into vogue more than a century ago, exhibitors allowed all sorts of connections between human and non-human. Animals were later walled off for safety, before the pendulum swung back to permit contact in the last few decades, said Prof Rothfels, author of Savages And Beasts: The Birth Of The Modern Zoo.

Some zoos are now refocusing how those encounters are staged, thinking of them from the perspective of the furry and feathered.

“Our priority is that the animal has what we call ‘choice and control’,” said Mr Dan Ashe, president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a US accrediting body.

It has updated its guidelines, asking members to address not only animals’ health, but also what Mr Ashe called “their social, psychological well-being” – to answer the question: “Are the animals happy?”

To hear animal welfare activists tell it, those at SeaQuest are not.

The for-profit company is not accredited by any zoo organisation. It has at times run afoul of the USDA, which governs only some of the fauna on display. Last summer, the four-year-old SeaQuest in Trumbull, Connecticut, closed after several USDA citations, including one when a child was bitten by a sugar glider. (The facility was written up for insufficient supervision.) Another in Colorado closed in 2024 after numerous state and federal citations.

The company has drawn near-constant protests from former employees and groups, including the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which filed complaints over what it called SeaQuest’s cruelty, neglect and exploitation.

According to state records obtained by The New York Times, nearly 100 animals, including two sloths, died at the Woodbridge location between 2019, when it opened, and 2023.

Late in June, the fish and wildlife division of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection sent the company a 32-page notice of violations, listing dozens of animals that were diseased, injured or mistreated, including territorial reptiles that were fighting so aggressively they drew blood, which spilled around their enclosure.

An otter and a porcupine escaped, recorded by security cameras but unnoticed by staff. A stressed scarlet macaw plucked out its feathers.

The authorities told SeaQuest it must immediately change its practices, and pay a nominal penalty by July 10, or risk substantial fines and the revocation of its permits and animals.

Asked for comment after the violations were filed, a SeaQuest spokesperson​ pointed the Times to the frequently asked questions section of the company’s website.

In a response to an earlier ABC News investigation, the company had posted: “Between 2021 and 2022, SeaQuest Woodbridge acquired hundreds of rescue animals, many of whom were in very poor health.”

Executives did not respond to questions about specific incidents.

Two sloths have also died at the Las Vegas SeaQuest. Like all the others, it is located in an indoor shopping centre, where natural light, humidity, vegetation and diggable floors – the environmental setting in which many animals thrive – are in short supply.

Mr Covino said animals were still more content there than in the wild – because the temperature is controlled, they are fed on a schedule, and they do not have to deal with environmental hazards.

Acidification in the oceans threatens millions of living things, he said.

“We have that happening right now all over our planet, but not inside SeaQuest. So when people come to understand that, then they realise, ‘Oh, I see why they do better in malls’.”

Mr Covino, SeaQuest’s CEO, has no formal training in animal husbandry, biology or zoology; he was a securities broker who left that field after his licence was temporarily suspended by regulators for fiscal improprieties.

He and his brother Ammon first had an aquarium in Boise, Idaho, but Ammon Covino was convicted in 2013 of animal trafficking, as he tried to move sea creatures from Florida to Idaho.

He was sentenced to a year in federal prison and barred from participating in the marine life industry, but was imprisoned again – twice – in 2016 for violating parole after he helped his family open more facilities. (Ammon Covino’s wife Crystal owns an aquarium in Austin, Texas, which also came under scrutiny from the USDA and the Texas authorities.)

Asked in the video interview in 2023 if there was anybody on SeaQuest’s staff who dealt with animal ethics, Mr Vince Covino responded: “Would you define animal ethics? I’m not sure I’m familiar with that.”

A SeaQuest executive who was sitting in read out an online definition.

SeaQuest does not employ anyone with that focus, Mr Covino said, though its front-line staff does look out for issues.

“When you have 200 people that have a combined a thousand years, maybe, in the animal behaviour industry, you just get some tribal knowledge,” he said. “Between those 200 people, probably every zoo and aquarium in the country has been visited.”

Asked about other choices that critics say are harmful, like waking sloths and other nocturnal beings for interactions, the executives said SeaQuest’s team had trained the animals, using red lights, to reverse their natural circadian rhythms and be awake at times that are better for people.

The sloth trade is not federally regulated. Animals are accessible via breeders, although, according to federal data, many are still captured from the wild.

Because some states do not have guidelines on sloths in captivity, it is impossible to say how many might be exhibited nationwide, but activists say that over the last few years, there has been an uptick – possibly because of Tiger King.

After that hit Netflix documentary series helped draw attention to the seedy industry of tiger cub petting, a federal “big cat” law was passed, prohibiting most private possession and interaction with the public.

The response by animal exhibitors, conservationists say, was to pivot to smaller, less regulated creatures – “otters, sloths, other primates”, said Ms Michelle Sinnott, a lawyer and the director of captive animal law enforcement at Peta. “We’re seeing more and more facilities, roadside attractions, that are just popping up out of people’s houses.”

Beyond provenance, some animal ethicists also argue that there is no way for undomesticated creatures to communicate consent to being touched. Does a stingray really want to be patted by a pre-schooler?

Zoos and other institutions depend on human involvement to protect their flocks and to understand the grave need for conservation.

But Dr Gray, the Australian zoo chief, said: “You don’t have to touch every animal to feel in love with animals.” NYTIMES