A Large Order of Meal Worms Please

Recently at Zoo Boise I was invited to feed live meal worms to a sloth bear.  I'm always up for a new experience and was instantly struck by just how dang cute the sloth bear looked sitting on her rump in her enclosure.  I was told to hold out my hand and a zoo volunteer put a live meal worm about 2 inches long (tan, skinny, hairy looking) in the palm of my hand.   Another volunteer was sitting down near an elbow pvc pipe that was jutting out from the sloth's enclosure.

I could hear a vacuum sound coming from the pipe (Have you ever deposited money in your bank's drive up and it gets sucked up through that big tube thing? Kinda like that only not so powerful.)  I was instructed to drop the worm into the pipe and that's when I found out the vacuum sound was actually coming from the sloth herself!  In the wild sloths have to suck worms out of mounds of dirt or logs and they are missing their front teeth to help facilitate the way they eat.  I drop a worm in the tube, she sucks it up.

Now every time I indulge and go through a drive up window for french fries I'm going to get the giggles thinking about my new sloth friend at Zoo Boise hoovering her own version of fast food.

Times/days may vary but look for opportunities to feed the sloth bear at 11:30 am at Zoo Boise.