Sloth

Today, as I anxiously and hopefully await clearance to do my research here in Brazil, I visited the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém, the oldest research institution in the Amazon. They have a zoo-botanical park with lots of native Amazonian flora and fauna, and some not so native flora and fauna, including me. My favorite activity today was watching a sloth (preguiça, literally “sloth”) crawling across the top of a parrot cage. Well, crawling might not be the best word. Moving. Slowly. Watch it progress in these pictures. (By the way, this is actually a pretty accurate representation of how I feel about graduate school.)

Preguiça, um

Preguiça, dois

Preguiça, over the edge

Then he goes over the edge!  (Again, graduate school?)

Unfortunately, I also saw some of the worst taxidermy that probably exists, though it’s nice that the museum lets visitors know that they don’t actually kill the animals to put them on display. They wait until they die of natural causes. This little critter, an onça (jaguar), was alive when I was last here. Here’s his skeleton. Unfortunately, his pelt is in a different room.

Onça skeleton

The cover pictures is of a manatee skeleton (they’re called “peixe-boi,” like “fish-ox”). Appropriate,  you can’t argue with that.