Native to the tropical rainforests of Latin America, where sloths apparently spend most of their life happily sleeping and cradled by the luscious canopy of the Amazon Rainforest, the sloth is nowadays a synonym for lazy couch-potatoes the world over. new molecules that can, in the medium or long term, be used in this battle against antibiotic resistance," said Chavarria.The most famously slow animal on the planet needs little introduction. "Projects like ours can contribute to finding.
The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050, resistance to antibiotics could cause 10 million deaths a year. However, microbial resistance to antibiotics has been a growing problem, meaning some medicines no longer work to fight the infections they were designed to treat.Īntimicrobial resistance is a natural phenomenon, but the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals and plants has made the problem worse. His discovery of the world's first bacteria-killer, or antibiotic, earned him the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine. what type of molecules are involved," said Chavarria.Īn example of this is penicillin, discovered in 1928 by British scientist Alexander Fleming, who discovered that a fungal contamination of a laboratory culture appeared to kill a disease-causing bacteria. "Before thinking about an application in human health, it's important to first understand. He began his research in 2020, and has already pinpointed 20 "candidate" microorganisms waiting to be named.īut he said there is a long road ahead in determining whether the sloth compounds could be useful to humans. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050, resistence to antibiotics could cause 10 million deaths a year. Since receiving her first sloth, whom she named "Buttercup," in 1992, she has cared for around 1,000 animals. bodily ecosystem."Īvey, who established the sanctuary with her late Costa Rican husband, Luis Arroyo, had never even heard of a sloth back home in Alaska. So that tells us there's something going on in their.
"I think maybe in the 30 years (we've been open), we've seen five animals that have come in with an infected injury. "We've received sloths that had been burned by power lines and their entire arm is just destroyed. "We've never received a sloth that has been sick, that has a disease or has an illness," she told AFP. She treats and rehabilitates the creatures with a view to releasing them back into the wild. They live in the canopies of trees in the jungle on the Caribbean coast, where the climate is hot and humid.Īmerican Judy Avey runs a sanctuary in the balmy jungle to care for sloths injured after coming into contact with humans or other animals. The sloth is a national symbol in laid back Costa Rica, and a major tourist attraction for the Central American country.īoth the two-toed (Choloepus Hoffmanni) and three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) sloth species have seen their populations decline, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.īoth the two-toed (Choloepus Hoffmanni) and three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) have seen their populations decline, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. or inhibit other competitors" such as fungi, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Microbiology. They found the possible existence of antibiotic-producing bacteria that "makes it possible to control the proliferation of potentially pathogenic bacteria. "Obviously when there is co-existence of many types of organisms, there must also be systems that control them," he said.Ĭhavarria and a team took fur samples from Costa Rican two- and three-toed sloths to examine what that control system could be. a very extensive habitat," Max Chavarria, a researcher at the University of Costa Rica, told AFP. "If you look at the sloth's fur, you see movement: you see moths, you see different types of insects. Yet, experts say, the famously slow-moving mammals appear to be surprisingly infection-proof. Sloth fur, research has found, hosts bustling communities of insects, algae, fungi and bacteria, among other microbes, some of which could pose disease risk.
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