While driving near his home in Brazil with a few friends last month, biologist George Xavier noticed an animal crawling in the middle of the busy roadway. It was a sloth — and to make matters worse, she was near a curve in the road, giving motorists little
time to see and avoid her.
Xavier pulled over to help, watching in horror as a passing semi-truck just narrowly missed the sloth, who survived between its tires.
Acting quickly, Xavier then rushed into the road to carry the sloth to the safety of a tree.
But that wouldn’t be the only sloth Xavier would save that day. Just a few minutes later, further down the road, he’d do it again.
Twenty minutes later, after saving the first sloth, Xavier and his friends came across another who was in the road. This time, passersby had stopped, but none seemed to know what to do next.
Xavier then gently picked up the sloth and carried her into the forest, placing her onto a tree as well.
Thanks to the biologist’s quick thinking, both sloths were safe.
“We saved two lives,” Xavier said later. “We had just been talking about it. I was thinking, ‘What if we see another sloth?’ And it had only been 20 minutes since we saved that other one. There was another sloth right in the middle of the road … We got lucky.”
