It’s a mystery that has consumed Denver for days.
Which animal at the Denver Zoo is pregnant? As of Friday morning, we knew it wasn’t a tiger (because all the tigers in the zoo are related … which hasn’t stopped anyone on Game of Thrones), or a giraffe (because they’re on birth control but … Dobby) or an elephant because they're all dudes.
An ultrasound provided little clues … especially to folks with a journalism degree.
But on Friday morning, we got our answer … it was a sloth!
Charlotte the sloth is somewhere between 7 and 10 months along in her 10-month gestation period.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: What kind of baby is the Denver Zoo having?!
That means we could see a baby sloth (!) sometime between now and March. The father is named Elliot, and it's the happy couple's first child.
Congratulations, Charlotte and Elliot!
And if this baby sloth news doesn't excite you, you'll change your mind when you see these photos of what a baby sloth looks like (hint: they're adorable).
This will be the first sloth birth the Denver has ever had. It's expected to happen in the exhibit space in one of the rooms of Bird World with Elliot around, according to the Denver Zoo.
Charlotte came to the Denver Zoo from Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 2015, and Elliot came to the zoo in 2007 from Zoo Miami.
The pair were "matched" for their genetic diversity -- and just like humans, there's no set time that sloths have to know each other to reproduce.
