Hackney author hails ‘the power of sloth’

Lucy Cooke with a sloth. Photograph: Phil Stebbing

Sloths are enjoying a renaissance on the internet, and the creatures’ rise to prominence has been largely attributed to Lucy Cooke, a zoologist and filmmaker, whose video documenting sloths at the Aviarios del Caribe sanctuary in Costa Rica went viral.

“Cats are so last year,” says the London Fields-based author. “Sloths are slowly taking over.”

As founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, Slothville, Cooke has gained over 40,000 followers in her quest to educate the world about sloths.

Time magazine recently dubbed Lucy’s efforts in promoting them “more successful than anyone has ever been at anything. Ever.”

A fan of the underdog, Cooke says that “sloths are the most misunderstood animal on the planet, because they’re known as being lazy and stupid”.

Yet sloths make up two thirds of the mammalian biomass in South American rainforests, and a sinfully lazy and stupid animal couldn’t possibly have survived so successfully.

Sloths have taken a different evolutionary approach to survival, shunning fight or flight for the steady, gentle and deliberate method of camouflaging themselves in the trees.

“Sloths are stealth ninjas. They move so slowly that they just slip under the radar.”

Cooke is spearheading this movement, propelling sloths into the position of the hippest animal on the planet – a worthy adversary for their feline competition.

The internet reverence of this amazing Xenarthran serves only as proof that sloths are definitely cool. “They are idiosyncratic and eccentric and they’ve got magnificent hair,” says Cooke.

“If there was an East London sloth it would be the Maned Sloth which is essentially the ‘mullet’ sloth – business at the front and party at the back.

“It’d be pretty at home in Hackney.”

Cooke is also very much at home in Hackney. A resident of ten years, she loves the borough, calling it a “fantastic place to live”.

The release of her first book, The Power of Sloth, saw Cooke become a New York Times best-selling author. It has now been renamed A Little Book of Sloth for the UK market. The book features tales and photos of the sloths at the sanctuary in Costa Rica, allowing children and adults to learn more about a species that we know surprisingly little about.

The book is due out on 10 April, and her new BBC One prime time series, Talk to the Animals, comes out at the end of April.

The Power of Sloths is published by Hachette Children’s Books. RRP: £7.99. ISBN: 9781445127903