Parental care Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The parental care can be defined as any other that increases the ability of an offspring, to survive and reproduce. The pregnancy in brown-throated sloths last six months and after the birth only mother cares for the baby, at least for six months. During the first trimester the baby will have, besides milk, thermal comfort and its first lessons of locomotion, self-cleaning, how to come down to the ground to release of feces and urine, and search for food. The aim of the study was to observe and apply some management techniques for the development of the orphans or abandoned sloth babies by their mothers and to propose some solutions for feeding, and general maintenance as close as their mother provides until they are prepared to come back to the nature. The study was carried out from 2011 to 2018, during this period we have received six baby sloths within 1 week to 2 months old. The subjects live in an urban park in the city of Barra Mansa, south of Rio de Janeiro state. In the first quarter of the offspring we offer 70 ml of lactose-free milk Pet Milk © diluted, as per the manufacturer's recommendation, three times a day. We provided fresh leaves of Theobroma cacao (Malvaceae), Ficus microcarpa (Moraceae), Ceiba speciosa (Malvaceae), and aments of Cecropia sp. (Urticaceae) ad libitum. For the maintenance of the temperature the babies were kept in an indoor environment, resting in plastic boxes, hugging a stuffed sloth and wraps in woolen blankets. They were taken to the ground every two days and received a soft massage to stimulate the self-cleaning, at least twice a day. Measurement and weighing were collected after defecation. The weight gain was ± 0.1 kg and 8 cm. In the second trimester the boxes were removed, and babies were transferred to the enclosure with indoor and outdoor environment, made by tree branches and hammocks. The “stuffed mother” was kept during the night time, they gained weight and grew around of ± 1 kg and 14 cm. Weaning occurred gradually at intervals of 2, 4 and 6 days. Confirming the hypotheses, the offspring grew more in the first trimester and gained more weight in the second. The pattern may be related to an adaptive advantage of staying lighter to be cling all the time by mothers. For the second trimester they start foraging by themselves and get together the mother´s just to sleep. We believe that this special milk, a minimal diversity of fresh leaves species, the maintenance of the temperature and the perform of self-cleaning is fundamental to increase the health and survival of the babies. The data can provide some knowledge about the mother-baby relationship, to increase the survival rate of the orphaned sloths, and contributed to the preservation programs of the species.
Keywords: Sloths, Bradypus variegatus, parental care, sloth babies