Mass Sloth Deaths in Florida Are a Warning About Wildlife Trade and Pandemic Risk, Scientists Say

When pathologists cut open dead sloths from a planned Florida tourist attraction, they found a plethora of pathogens.

Parasites, bacteria and viruses were all lurking in animals weakened by grueling international transport and stressful conditions at the warehouse that received them, according to necropsy records and a state inspection report obtained by Inside Climate News through an open records request. The sloths had distended stomachs, diarrhea matted into fur and lungs congested with pneumonia.

The Orlando business where they died, called Sloth World, closed before ever opening to the public amid a backlash after an April investigation by Inside Climate News. But wildlife scientists, epidemiologists and veterinary pathologists say the details of the mass deaths spotlight broader public-health concerns with the multi-billion-dollar legal wildlife trade in an era where three-quarters of new infectious diseases originate in animals .

The industry creates a pipeline for viruses, parasites and fungi to mutate, spread and threaten humans and animals alike—helped along by major gaps in government protections.

“Wildlife trading is inherently a system that can amplify pathogen risk,” said Dr. Neil Vora, a physician and epidemiologist who spent nearly a decade working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including on the frontlines of Ebola outbreaks.

As a person, Vora said he’s heartbroken about the suffering of the animals Sloth World imported from the forests of Peru and Guyana—more than 50 have died. As an epidemiologist, he is deeply concerned by the movement of wild animals into commercial settings. Vora pointed to the 2002 SARS outbreak in China, sparked by live animal markets, and the 2003 Mpox outbreak in Wisconsin, linked to the exotic pet trade , as clear historical warnings of what happens when species are artificially commingled under intense stress.

“It is like conducting a dangerous genetic experiment,” Vora said of the trade. “It’s just a ticking time bomb that has huge risk—it’s like pandemic roulette.”

Pathogens crossing species barriers have driven many of the world’s most consequential outbreaks, including HIV/AIDS, influenza and West Nile virus. Two recent outbreaks of infectious diseases originating in animals, Ebola and hantavirus, have sparked international concern.

Sloth World closed before opening to the public, and the surviving animals were transferred to the Central Florida Zoo. Credit: Central Florida Zoo

Many scientists, including those on a World Health Organization advisory panel, believe that COVID-19 likely had such origins, pointing to animals sold at a market in Wuhan, China. Some experts say a laboratory accident is another possible origin.

The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the WHO, which coordinates pandemic responses, in January. Experts said many other pandemic protections are weak or missing in the U.S., and the trend isn’t going in the right direction. The Trump administration has reduced staffing at federal agencies involved in aspects of exotic wildlife oversight, including the CDC, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The White House did not respond to questions about that.

“We do not have strong enough regulations in the United States or internationally to address this threat,” Vora said. Laws, he added, “need to be rooted in public health, not just the conservation status of the animals.”

The exotic wildlife industry is fragmented, with a wide variety of businesses and institutions importing animals. But two groups representing portions of the sector, the Exotic Wildlife Association and the Pet Advocacy Network, did not respond to requests for comment.

Containing a pathogen once it breaks out is brutally difficult, even within highly regulated, heavily screened systems like domestic food networks that feature routine monitoring, warned Meghan Davis, a veterinarian and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She pointed to the ongoing spread of H5N1 avian influenza, known as bird flu, in U.S. dairy cattle as a prime example of such containment challenges.

Jérôme Gippet, an interdisciplinary ecologist who has studied the wildlife trade’s relationship to pathogen spread, called the industry “very dangerous.”

In April, he co-published findings in the journal Science from an analysis of 40 years of international trade records, revealing that species involved in the global wildlife trade are 50 percent more likely to share pathogens with humans than those that aren’t traded. The longer a species was traded, the more pathogens it shared.

A sloth received from Sloth World sits in an incubator at the Central Florida Zoo. Credit: Central Florida Zoo

“The problem isn’t just the pathogen,” Gippet said. “The trade creates the opportunities for these viruses to become zoonotic,” jumping from animals to humans.

The volume of wild animals legal…