Meet the new face of Veragua Rainforest - Veragua Rainforest

by Shannon Farley

Costa Rica’s world image is of breathtaking green rainforests, beautiful beaches, exciting adventures … and smiling sloths hanging out in trees.

Meet Veragua Rainforest’s new logo mascot – the sloth!

You can spot a sloth nearly every other day in the Veragua Rainforest, so it is only natural that this friendly arboreal mammal is the eco-adventure park’s new emblem.

“We love our new logo. It shows a sloth in Veragua Rainforest during the early morning or late afternoon light, when the sky gets rosy-colored and the mountains deepen in blue hues that are almost mysterious,” said Marti Jimenez, president of Veragua Rainforest. “Sloths in the wild represent how exotic and vulnerable our habitat is. Therefore, the red color in our logo calls attention to our endangered ecosystem which we strive to protect.”

Visitors from all over the world come to Veragua to experience the rainforest, and they are always excited to see sloths, Jimenez noted.

Costa Rica has two species of sloths – there are six in the world. The sloth featured in the new logo is the Three-fingered Brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus), which is the most well-known due to its “raccoon-like” mask and face that looks like it is smiling. The other species is the Hoffmann’s Two-fingered sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni), which is larger, champagne to dark brown in color, with a light colored face, brown eye rings, and a muzzle-like snout. You can see both kinds of sloth in the Veragua Rainforest.

And you can celebrate International Sloth Day on October 20! The annual holiday calls attention to the lives and natural habitat of tropical sloths, native to Central and South America.

Veragua Rainforest is passionately dedicated to conservation and protecting the rainforest where sloths and millions of other animals and plants live. Their Foundation for Rainforest Research (the Veragua Foundation) provides world-class scientific research on rainforest organisms and climate change and offers educational study programs to high schools and universities around the world.

The cute and colorful red-eyed treefrog that has been the symbol of Veragua Rainforest since it opened in 2008 is not retired yet! He now serves as the logo of the Veragua Foundation.