After a Life in Slow Motion, World's Oldest Sloth Dies

By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor | June 6, 2017 03:58pm ET

The world's oldest known sloth has died at 43 years of age.

Officials at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia announced that they had to euthanize a Hoffmann's two-toed sloth known as Miss C on Friday (June 2). Her quality of life had "deteriorated due to age-related health issues," zoo officials said. The sloth had reached more than double her life expectancy.

"Miss C truly was a phenomenal creature and believed to be the oldest of her kind in the world," Adelaide Zoo curator Phil Ainsley said in a statement. "The treatment Miss C required was very invasive and would likely only delay the inevitable, so the hard decision was made to humanely euthanize her."

Miss C— who was born at in the Adelaide Zoo in 1974, far from her native home in the Americas — was also the last of her kind in Australia.

"At this stage, there are no sloths left in the region, so while we would love to one day house this amazing species again, it may be some time before a sloth once again calls Adelaide Zoo, or Australia home," Ainsley said.



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Orangutan stuns zookeepers by becoming pregnant while on the pill

Adelaide zoo is hoping to support 34-year-old orangutan Karta through her pregnancy as she has lost six infants in the past

Elle Hunt

Thursday 8 December 2016 03.04 GMT 

A Sumatran orangutan at Adelaide zoo has fallen pregnant, despite being on contraceptives.

Karta the 34-year-old orangutan is due early in 2017. Jodie Ellen, a senior primate keeper, announced the “exciting but nerve-wracking” news on the zoo’s Facebook page. “It wasn’t a planned pregnancy,” she said. “Mother Nature actually intervened.”

Karta has lost six infants since 1995. Most recently, in 2014, she gave birth to a stillborn. The zoo said it was going ahead with the pregnancy because Sumatran orangutans are critically endangered. “We are doing everything we can in our power to support her in this pregnancy,” Ellen said.

Cameras have been installed to monitor Karta during the lead-up to the birth, and the zoo was prepared to train her to breastfeed, which she has struggled with in the past.

 “It’s a very stressful time for all of us,” Ellen said. “We all desperately want this to be a positive outcome, and we all hope for the best.”

It is estimated that there are only about 7,000 orangutans left in the rainforests in Sumatra, Indonesia, and that population continues to decline by as many as 1,000 a year. The greatest threat to the species is habitat loss.

Karta was born in July 1982 at San Diego Zoo and arrived in Adelaide in November 1992. The zoo describes her as a “strong and independent, 21st-century woman”. She is one of its three Sumatran Orangutans.

Source  

Orphaned tree kangaroo raised by surrogate wallaby mother in Adelaide zoo

World-first surrogacy between a wallaby and a kangaroo occurred after the tree kangaroo’s mother was killed by a falling branch

Australian Associated Press

Tuesday 30 June 2015 02.35 BST

An orphaned tree kangaroo has been raised by a surrogate wallaby mother at Adelaide zoo, in what vets say is a world first.

The orphaned tree kangaroo was named

 Makaia and lived with its surrogate

 mother for about three months. 

Photograph: Adelaide Zoo

The cross–species surrogacy between a wallaby and a kangaroo has never been attempted before but was forced on the zoo when the the tree kangaroo’s mother was killed by a falling branch.

“We had no idea if the yellow-footed rock-wallaby would accept the tree kangaroo joey, but if we wanted to save the joey we had to try our luck,” veterinarian David McLelland said.

The tree kangaroo was orphaned in November and was too young to be reared by hand.

The zoo had previously reared wallabies using surrogate mothers from other wallaby species, but had never used the technique to have a wallaby mother raise a joey tree kangaroo.

The cross-foster procedure, to get the tree kangaroo joey to latch on to the new teat, ran smoothly and tiny ripples of movement over the next few days confirmed the joey was alive and thriving.

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