This New York business is exploiting sloths for money

The Humane Society of the United States released the findings of a recent undercover investigation at Sloth Encounters in Hauppauge, New York, owned by Larry Wallach. The investigator captured disturbing footage of staff hitting sloths, stressed sloths kept in crowded conditions fighting with one another, and a wounded sloth struggling when Wallach roughly grabbed his head and neck. Wallach, who has a long history of federal Animal Welfare Act violations, converted a former pool supplies store in 2022 into a sloth’s worst nightmare, where the public can pay $50 to spend half an hour holding, feeding and petting several of his seven sloths. According to the Humane Society of the United States, nearly 130 facilities in the U.S. offer close encounters with sloths. On average, 140 sloths are being captured in the wild and imported into the U.S. annually to feed the demand for captive sloths.