Sloths are increasingly used in wildlife selfie tourism in Latin America and have entered the illegal pet trade, with welfare consequences from their highly specialized behavioral and metabolic needs.
Sloths used in selfie tourism experience extreme welfare harm from the complete disruption of their rest requirements. Animals that sleep 15 to 20 hours daily cannot meet their physiological needs while being held continuously for tourist photos. The stress response in sloths is metabolically costly for animals with extremely limited energy budgets. Restraint for handling causes acute fear in animals evolved as prey species. The Sloth Conservation Foundation has documented cardiac stress and reproductive failure in tourist-used sloths. The selfie sloth phenomenon is driven by consumer demand that can be redirected through education.